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FERRARI
Director: Michael Mann Cast: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Gabriel Leone, Daniela Piperno, Patrick Dempsey, Sarah Gadon, Jack O'Connell, Giuseppe Festinese MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:10 Release Date: 12/25/23 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 23, 2023 Racing is a "deadly passion" and a "terrible joy," according to Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver), whose surname has become synonymous with very fast (and very expensive) cars. Director Michael Mann's biographical drama follows the man and his passion over the course of a few weeks in 1957, when his business is in jeopardy, his racing team is in disarray, his personal life is about to collapse, and the ghosts of the past linger in the front of his mind. Death is everywhere in Ferrari—decades prior, about year before, potentially around every corner of the racetrack. Enzo knows this and has come to accept that fact as much as any person can. He's lucky he didn't die, as a couple of his friends and several of his competitors did, while he was still racing, and now, he watches as young men who share that deadly passion risk their lives in his name. If Enzo seems uncaring about those lives, he is, as he explains after one of the most promising drivers on the Ferrari team dies while trying to defend a local track record. He has to put up an emotional barrier when it comes to the sport. If he doesn't, the pain and worry would probably be too much for him to continue in any capacity in the realm of car racing. Here, then, is a man who tries to hold control over everything—from his emotions, to his business, to his team's success, to what his legacy will be and who will carry the mantle when he's retired or dead. Those are the concerns of Troy Kennedy Martin's screenplay, adapted from Brock Yates' biographical book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine. The question isn't whether or not Enzo has any actual control over any of those things, because he doesn't, of course. No person can truly control how they feel at any given moment—no more than one can control a malfunctioning gear shift, a broken brake pedal, or some random piece of debris in the road. Enzo puts on a good show of it, though, and that makes him a man who's easy to admire and much more difficult to like. That's the basic point of this film, perhaps, which does show some degree of admiration for how much its protagonist is able to accomplish under such trying circumstances. He deals, negotiates, and manipulates the press, business interests, and government officials in order to keep his car manufacturing company afloat on his terms. He puts together a team of drivers who are willing to push themselves to their absolute limits to win—and even beyond those, since they all know a tight turn or a narrow stretch of asphalt taken the wrong way could mean severe injury or death. Enzo battles his wife Laura (Penélope Cruz), more his partner in business than in marriage at this point, over the possibility of bankruptcy, as well as the question of his personal and professional successor. In every one of these facets of his life at the moment, he's determined to win. Just as with racing, though, there can be—and, at some point, almost certainly will be—a terrible cost for victory. That's the flip side of this story, which slowly but surely creeps up on us and keeps repeating over and over again. This man is willing to pay that price, but given his power and control over so many things and people, it's usually not him doing the actual paying. There's his family life, which is now split in two. One half is his marriage to Laura, which has come under more stress than usual after the death of their son about a year prior. Neither of them has finished grieving, but as with most matters of their home life, they do it separately, as an early scene of them passing each other outside the family mausoleum makes apparent. His other family is with Enzo's mistress of more than a decade. She's Linda Lardi (Shailene Woodley), and the two have a young son who officially has his mother's surname. Enzo is kind and gentle with the boy, as flashbacks show him being with the first son with Laura, but to officially recognize him as his son would further complicate things with Laura. He can't afford that now, as the company, which is half in her name, is under great financial strain. Enzo says he doesn't want to break his wife's heart, but that seems more like a socially acceptable excuse than anything real. As the man makes repeatedly clear, racing is Enzo's real motive for just about everything. He needs the company to continue with the sport, and he needs to figure out his familial situations in order to keep the company going. If this comes across as cold and calculating, there is definitely a lot of that in this man, especially as played by Driver. The racing sequences, both the preparations for and the actual depictions of them, come to embody that, too. Enzo doesn't have words of encouragement, so much as he has demands for his drivers to be the best (They all call him "Commendatore"). He pushes and pushes, insisting the team members make those dangerous moves, because the other racers certainly will. Ultimately, they're all trying to control something more powerful than them, and Mann doesn't blink when fate, driver error, or some unseen obstacle proves just how little control anyone possesses, such as in a startling moment during the climactic Mille Miglia and its gruesome aftermath. In such moments, Ferrari shows us that this is the cost of one man's success, glory, and legacy, and it's one he is more than willing to let others pay. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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