The first obvious thing about Ferrari, a film from 2023, is that it was written by Troy Kennedy Martin, writer of 1969’s The Italian Job. Martin died in 2009! It’s taken a long time to get this film made. Michael Mann has been talking about it since the early years of the new millennium. Back then he was going to produce and Sydney Pollack was going to direct. In the end, after much to and fro, and with Pollack also dead en route, Mann wound up directing it himself.
The second thing to say is that for a film about sexy cars, beautiful women, danger, speed, the thrill of the race and so on, it’s remarkably sober. Still fascinating but hardly thrilling, as if Michael Mann Ferrari Nerd took on Michael Mann Film-Maker and saw him off on the way to the chequered flag.
And so here we are in 2023 with Adam Driver rather than Christian Bale or Hugh Jackman (both mooted) in the role as the middle-aged Enzo Ferrari. Who we meet in 1957 at a critical moment in his life. The company he founded as the Second World War broke out has run out of money. His wife/business partner is in a permanent depression over the death of the couple’s son. Meanwhile, Enzo’s long-term mistress, Linda, is campaigning for the son she and Enzo have together to be given the Ferrari name.
All three problems will go away, Enzo calculates, if he can win the Mille Miglia in 1957, the 1,000-mile endurance race against rivals like Jaguar and Maserati. The publicity from a win will increase the order book, save the company, allow Enzo to buy out his wife, who owns half of the company, and give him enough breathing space to resolve most of the problems with Linda.
While Martin’s screenplay deftly weaves these strands together, Mann delivers a watered-down version of his high style. Anyone hoping for the Mann of Collateral, or Heat or Miami Vice will have to look elsewhere. There’s plenty of period detail – how homely and comfortable the various Ferrari dwellings look – but this is the Mann of The Insider, or Last of the Mohicans, or Public Enemies. Don’t expect too much gloss. Mann is after realism.
Which, considering this is one of the world’s most glamorous luxury brands we’re talking about, seems like a missed opportunity. Call it budgetary restraint.
Let’s talk about the cod Italian accents, which all the actors are doing and which seem to have rubbed some people up the wrong way, with accusations of cultural inappropriateness flying about all over the place. Didn’t bother me. It’s an accent, not particularly grating, or authentic. I’m not sure when movies suddenly started being required to behave like the human genome project. It’s not as if he’s doing Chico Marx. His stab at wonky Italian also helps de-locate him as Adam Driver and embody him as Enzo Ferrari, who is most remembered as a much older man than Driver currently is. Shailene Woodley does it too – she’s the long-suffering mistress. And Penélope Cruz gets away with it most as the angry wife and grieving mother, I’m guessing, because most people can’t separate out Spanish from Italian.
The performances are all sketchy, because that’s the sort of film this is – a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of something else and then back to the starting grid – but Driver gives it some heft here and there, while Cruz takes home most of the honours in another of the emotional grand dame turns that seem to be increasingly her thing since she hit middle age.
The film builds towards the Mille Miglia. We’ve been warned by plot foreshadowing, and by countless shots of spindly cars skittering about on thin tyres, that someone is going to die during this race. When it comes it turns out to be spectacular and gruesome and likely to make you stand up out of your chair. It is tonally wrong somehow. A sudden moment of excess in a film that’s been largely rather restrained.
Sarah Gadon fans will wonder why she is in this and hardly used. The same goes for Jack O’Connell – barely a word. Patrick Dempsey gets more of a shake but is still not in it enough to justify the bother of hiring him. But then that’s the film – bitty. Ferrari the racing supremo. Ferrari the manufacturer of production cars. Ferrari the husband, father and lover. Ferrari the legend. They’re all here. But then they’re all on Wikipedia too.
Ferrari – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
