1. There's a lot of commentary on Mank which re-litigates the old authorship dispute of Mankiewicz versus Welles, which I think is a disservice to both the film & to larger story of the making of Citizen Kane.

2. Screenwriter versus director, Mank versus Welles is a tired debate because like almost every film aside from Brakage-style independent movies all film is collaborative (and Brakage, to be frank, had a lot of help from his family!).

3. On the Mank/Welles credit, I think @tnyfrontrow is judicious: “Mankiewicz’s work was fundamental, and Welles’s revisions were transformative.” But of course the film was also made by more than just the writer & director: there's the whole rest of the crew.

4. Leaving aside the tired Welles debate, what Mank gets right is Mankiewicz as an emblematic figure of the 1930s Hollywood left, uneasily a pet of the rich, whose folly & corruption he lashes out at.

5. The real triumph of Mank is that it helps us recover Citizen Kane as a Popular Front movie: an attack on plutocrat made by people who were close enough to wealthy to see the threat the posed to democracy. More here: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/mank-welles-mankiewicz-kane/