Film Review

Ferrari (2023) — Michael Mann ponders masculinity, mortal danger, and fast motors

In the 1950s, the founder of the Ferrari auto company struggles with crises in his business and his marriage…

My nervousness of heights wouldn’t make me the best mountain climber, but I love mountaineering movies. The same goes for motor racing films: I don’t have a driving licence and have zero interest in the real sport, but dramatised versions or intense documentaries like Senna (2010) captivate me in ways I can’t resist.

Not every racing movie roars to victory, of course. For every exhilarating Rush (2013), there’s a Le Mans ’66 / Ford v Ferrari (2019) where the racing sequences deliver basic satisfaction but the off-track drama fails to convince. With Ferrari, then, Michael Mann (Heat) is bold to prioritise character and business dynamics over adrenaline-pumping races. While the film does boast one electrifying race sequence, most of the time it leans instead into the human complexities and corporate machinations behind the Ferrari brand.

The gamble largely pays off. While Ferrari doesn’t reach the heights of Rush, it’s several laps ahead of Le Mans ’66, whose storyline it prefigures by a decade (likely purely by coincidence). For Mann aficionados, meanwhile, the film offers plenty of familiar territory away from the crime genre: themes of masculinity, extreme danger, and the precariousness of the family unit take centre stage, echoing much of Mann’s previous work. (The director has also covered sports before, in 2001’s Ali.)

The movie starts with a montage mixing black-and-white footage, likely dating back to the 1920s, with shots of Adam Driver behind the wheel cleverly interspersed, creating the illusion of his presence in that era. However, the main story takes place in 1957, focusing on one specific period in the life of Enzo Ferrari (Driver).

It begins with him leaving his house near Modena, Italy, for his office, this time in a considerably less glamorous car. Enzo Ferrari is middle-aged now, and perhaps we can already sense an inclination in him to find youthful thrills through his drivers. Certainly, the film feels rather enclosed for most of its duration (at one point featuring a pigeon so accustomed to captivity that it prefers its cage even when escape is possible) — and then, at the climactic race when the focus shifts decisively to the drivers themselves, Ferrari opens up.

That crucial race lies months ahead. Meanwhile, though, Ferrari’s marriage to Laura (a terrific Penélope Cruz) is troubled, shaken partly by the death of their son Dino, glimpsed in fleeting flashbacks. His loss hovers over the film like an admonition.

While Ferrari’s relationship with his mistress (Shailene Woodley) appears to be happier, a subtle tension still lingers beneath the surface, mirroring the dire situation unfolding at his automobile company, which is about to go bankrupt. His passion is for sleek racing cars, and he holds little regard for the “production cars” that cater to wealthy individuals yearning for a taste of Ferrari’s racing pedigree. However, a trusted advisor intervenes, proposing a bold strategy: conquer the gruelling thousand-mile Mille Miglia race and leverage the resulting publicity to boost sales of those very cars.

Mann’s film primarily revolves around Enzo Ferrari himself, with the two women in his life serving as principal subsidiary characters. Their importance is highlighted in one of the best scenes, where Laura reluctantly conducts negotiations at the bank to hand her share of the company over to Ferrari.

While several racing drivers feature in small parts, only Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone) — a recent recruit to the Ferrari stable — gets significant development. Collectively, though, they play a major role. Ferrari’s speech to them at a team lunch about the necessity of ruthless determination is another highlight, as is the effective montage where he sees the drivers off for the Mille Miglia, one by one. Then, shortly after, comes a shocking twist that will be completely unexpected if you’re not familiar with the history. It’s horrific, and barely foreshadowed at all.

Adam Driver’s controlled intensity is perfect for his role, and while his recent deliciously pampered Italian turn as Maurizio Gucci in House of Gucci (2021) might flicker across your mind at first, it quickly fades beneath the sheer force of his portrayal here.

Enzo Ferrari’s obsession with racing is shared with other men in his circle (who even bring stopwatches to Mass to time circuits, straining to hear engines over the sermons) and feels authentic without veering into caricature. So too does his cold detachment: he had to “build a wall” in his own emotions to avoid being devastated by the deaths of drivers, he explains. The film repeatedly ponders the cracks in this wall; the deaths of sons (both literal, like Dino, and metaphorical) are a recurring theme in Ferrari’s life and the movie itself, with his drivers arguably becoming sons of a kind. Though he seems lonely even with his mistress, he appears more deeply connected to them.

Among the supporting cast, Cruz is absolutely Driver’s match in their shared scenes — especially in the way she becomes more alive when she thinks she has the upper hand — and though Woodley playing his mistress has a less interesting character to work with, she does it plausibly and sympathetically despite failing to convince as an Italian. (I actually thought the character was supposed to be an American expat at first.) Daniela Piperno as Ferrari’s mother, Adalgisa, is hilarious: very much the kind of elderly Italian lady you cross at your peril.

Erik Messerschmidt, notable for impressive work with David Fincher (The Killer, Mank, Mindhunter), delivers clarity in Ferrari’s cinematography. Mann’s signature blues cede to a dominant brown palette, reflecting the film’s subdued tone, with dark interiors, damp exteriors, and little of the sunshine in which most films bathe Italian locations. Only briefly, during the Mille Miglia itself, is there the tiniest glimpse of touristic Italy.

The racing sequences themselves are often shot from low angles, providing a great sense of velocity, though they don’t provide much insight into driving tactics. The comparatively low tech of the era is almost tangible, too. So even if Ferrari is primarily a film of character and dialogue, rather than action, what we see supports it well; disappointingly, the same can’t be said of the score by Daniel Pemberton, as blatantly obvious and overwrought as his music for Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020).

Ferrari is a film of darkness, with few smiles either on the screen or in the cinema seats. It doesn’t wallow in that, though; there are joys as well as tragedies. Like much of Mann’s work, it explores the furthest reaches of one man’s drive while also contemplating how far he can be pushed. It’s unlikely to be heralded as one of the great racing movies, but Ferrari shines as an intricate character study, crafted with quiet power by the director and his actors.

USA • UK • ITALY • CHINA | 2023 | 130 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR •BLACK & WHITE | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Michael Mann. writer: Troy Kennedy Martin (based on the book ‘Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine’ by Brock Yates). starring: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley & Gabriel Leone.

Originally published at http://www.framerated.co.uk on January 3, 2024. All copyrighted images come under Fair Use doctrine in US & UK law.