“Ferrari” (2023) is Michael Mann’s latest film, which adapts Brock Yates’ 1991 biography “Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine.” Set in 1957, under the shadow of death and with his business teetering on the brink of financial ruin, Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is only focused on his team winning the May 12th Mille Miglia despite distractions from his dysfunctional domestic dramas.
I love Michael Mann, but it is hard to remember when I really enjoyed one of his more recent films—maybe “Collateral” (2004). My measuring stick will always be “The Keep” (1983) and “Manhunter” (1986), but his days of colorful surrealism have passed, and he is firmly in his realism era, not protagonists with flashes of madness. I planned to go to the screening, but I had a schedule conflict so once the 2023 Neon Box Set arrived, I watched it within days of its arrival. I went into “Ferrari” hoping for a prequel of “Ford v Ferrari” (2019), which Mann served as an executive producer, but no such luck. Mangold’s film covered broader themes and more character profiles than the brand names featured in the title, but Mann’s film serves the man and obfuscates to simplify a more complex life. The real-life Ferrari was a practical man, at times a fascist and others a surreptitious supporter of anti-fascists. Everyone wanted to assassinate him, but Enzo survived a time when industrialists turned up missing or dead.
“Ferrari” lacks focus until sixty-seven minutes into its one hundred thirty-minute runtime. If I consulted on the film before release, I would have started with my least favorite narrative device, in medias res, and started with Enzo’s speech about the ideal psychological profile of a race car driver, “You lack commitment. Look at the Maserati team….Men with a brutal determination to win with a cruel emptiness in their stomachs, detachment, loyal to one thing, not the team, loyal to the lust to win.” This speech is the needed filter to understand the set up in the first hour. He is describing himself: a single-minded, unempathetic man even to the people whom he claims to love the most. He cares about winning a race, keeping his business running and his sons with a caveat. He may care about his sons since they are extensions of him, but not enough to not use his oldest son’s grave like a therapy session unlike his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) who only smiles at the memory of their son. He does not openly acknowledge his only surviving son because it would jeopardize the business while his wife holds the purse strings, and he is even willing to put his son’s soul at risk by delaying his confirmation. It could be easy to miss because Driver still seems sympathetic by lighting up whenever he has a scene with a child. Ever the father, like Nicole Kidman, he can beam parental love at a stranger even if the story does not call for it.
“Ferrari” is not a bad movie, but it could be mistaken for one in the first half. Mann opens by inserting Driver into archival black and white footage of a race that Ferrari won with no contextual information before jumping to 1957 and hurling the audience into the middle of Ferrari’s baby mama drama. He is juggling two families, does not have a moment’s peace as scores of people hound him on the street and must deal with a justifiably furious wife who has been acting like a glorified secretary answering a barrage of early morning calls. These chaotic scenes feel reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” (2021) and the way that the film fetishized Italians as if it was a Saturday Night Live skit, but unlike Scott, who enjoys a good laugh at his subject’s expense, Mann is playing it straight. He has been working on this film since at least 1993. Mann may be under the mistaken belief that his audience is coming to this movie with a lot of knowledge about the subject and the characters, including Spanish aristocrat turned race car driver Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), but it takes a while to get oriented and it damages the ability to get invested in the story’s subtler notes.
When Alfonso initially approaches Ferrari, and Ferrari peels away, it feels as if Ferrari is suspicious and fleeing a possible set up, but the film never explores the threat of assassination so that scene feels abrupt, not orienting. Mann is uneven when recreating his professional life. During the first half, scores of random people call Ferrari “Commendatore.” Driver just sports a stern face and towers over everyone to convey the crucial nature of his existence to the survival of scores. Is Driver a good actor or is it that he has two modes, serious or angry, so if he sticks to one, he is fine? The parish priest delivers a homily that verges on being sacrilegious but was probably encouraging by suggesting that Jesus would not have been a carpenter but made cars. (well, Jesus did like a donkey, which was an affluent man’s ride of choice.)
Mann finds it easier to depict Ferrari through the lens of his family drama and sets it up as a loveless, long-over marriage versus a better life, but Cruz steals every scene that she is in. Divorcing Laura (a legal impossibility in the heavily Catholic region) would be a mistake. Cruz plays Laura as a woman of substance, still stunning at her lowest with no fucks left to give, a frustration borne from being the smartest person in the room and doing the right thing only to still not get what she wants: a living child and a husband who gets home before the maid does. She is the only one who does not defer to her husband and runs rings around his maneuvers. Shailene Woodley plays Ferrari’s love Lina Lardi, a more down to earth, unpretentious, warm, (recently and theoretically) principled woman. Woodley is a good actor whom I have enjoyed, but I nearly burst out into laughter upon seeing her in this movie. She would have to be Meryl Streep to believe that she is Italian and a woman from that era. These actors are too well known so it requires a lot of mental energy to suspend disbelief and buy that they are Italian.
Daniela Piperno, who plays Ferrari’s mom, Adalgisa Ferrari, is the towering force that can make a meal out of a few seconds of screentime. She brings out the best in her scenes with Cruz and Driver. Her take on Mama Ferrari makes it obvious where Ferrari got his ability to deflect accountability. With family like them, you do not need enemies. Also shout out to Patrick Dempsey, who played accomplished driver Piero Taruffi and was instantly recognizable even with bleached blonde hair, but was so good that I rationalized that it could not possibly be him.
Car fanatics are coming for the Mille Miglia. Reports make it sound as if Mann pulled off recreating a merciless accident which took bystanders’ lives, and it works on screen for now, but still shots make me wonder if the effect will age as well and still leave audiences speechless soon. I did appreciate how merciless it was, no fuss or muss, just straight and shocking. Intended as a compliment, it was like the violence of “The Happening” (2008) without the decorous cutaway before impact.
While “Ferrari” is a flawed movie, it has enough going for it that I may see it on the big screen to see if I’ll enjoy it more in its intended environment. I enjoyed “Ferrari” more than his last three films because of the cast’s ability to command attention and keep me invested in a subject that I do not care about it.
