Ferrari
Michael Mann’s biopic of the motor racing guru is a beautifully crafted thing, if on the ponderous side.
At the wheel: Adam Driver
It is interesting to note that Michael Mann and Ridley Scott emerged from the same London advertising scene in the late 1960s, which is why their films look so damned fabulous. Now they are both in their eighties and they’re still making pictures. They are the elder statesmen of the film industry and with that comes, um, a certain stateliness. In 2021, Ridley Scott directed Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci in House of Gucci, to less than favourable reviews. Now it is the turn of Michael Mann to direct Driver as an Italian icon, Enzo Ferrari. In spite of being Californian, Driver was born to play the role of the Italian racer, a speed freak who eventually swapped hairpin bends for the drawing board. He is the Driver, in name as well, of the engine of Mann’s meticulous narrative. Even so, it’s not a good sign for a film about speed to have viewers leaving the cinema talking about the costume design.
Another elder statesman – to whom the film is dedicated – is the scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, who died at the age of 77 and is still probably best known for creating the TV cop series Z-Cars and scripting the original Italian Job. He obviously liked his cars. But there is an old-worldliness to Ferrari that rather saps the energy out of it. The dialogue is good (Ferrari talks of his “deadly passion,” his “terrible joy”) and the score is magisterial (another triumph for Daniel Pemberton), but there’s an inertness to the action that makes the film drag. In his time, Michael Mann was a filmmaker of enormous kinetic energy (think The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, Ali), but here he seems more intent on polishing the chassis than stoking the engine.
In an age of the fast and the furious, Ferrari is a surprisingly sedate affair, the most spontaneous piece of action played out on a kitchen table between Driver and Penélope Cruz (recalling a not dissimilar scene in Bob Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice). Ferrari himself is presented as an aloof, arrogant figure and it has to be said is artfully underplayed by Driver. As his mistress and the mother of his secret son, Shailene Woodley is woefully wasted, leaving the teary close-ups to Penélope Cruz. Micheal Mann – and Troy Kennedy Martin – do handle the pitfalls of the biopic with some assurance, focusing on just one pivotal period of Ferrari’s life, although they fail to breathe life into it. It is unfortunate, too, that just four years ago James Mangold brought us Ford v Ferrari (aka Le Mans ’66), a high-octane portrait of competing car models that was as moving as it was breathtaking. Not that Mann’s Ferrari is without its merits – Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography is another major plus – it just needed to push the pedal to the metal.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, Patrick Dempsey, Michele Savoia, Lino Musella, Domenico Fortunato, Daniela Piperno, Valentina Bellè, Ben Collins.
Dir Michael Mann, Pro Michael Mann, P.J. van Sandwijk, Marie Savare, John Lesher, Thomas Hayslip, John Friedberg, Andrea Iervolino, Monika Bacardi, Gareth West, Lars Sylvest, Thorsten Schumacher and Laura Rister, Ex Pro Mohammed Al Turki, D.C. Cassidy, Adam Driver, Miki Emmrich, Michael Fisk, Artur Galstian, Wei Han, Neill Hughes, Niels Juul, Qi Lin, Conor Molony, Udaya Sharma, Samuel J. Brown, Gianluigi Longinotti Buitoni, Giacomo Mattioli, David Thomas Tao and Vahan Yepremyan, Screenplay Troy Kennedy Martin, based on the book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine by Brock Yates, Ph Erik Messerschmidt, Pro Des Maria Djurkovic, Ed Pietro Scalia, Music Daniel Pemberton, Costumes Massimo Cantini Parrini, Sound David Werntz, Dialect coaches Tim Monich and Benjamin Shilling.
Forward Pass/Storyteller Productions/STXfilms/Ketchup Entertainment/Esme Grace Media/Cecchi Gori USA/Iervolino & Lady Bacardi Entertainment/Red Sea Film Fund-Black Bear Pictures/STX International.
130 mins. USA/UK/Italy/China. 2023. US Rel: 25 December 2023. UK Rel: 26 December 2023. Cert. 15.
