Summary
Michael Mann’s return to the big screen is beautifully shot, but like the man it depicts it is often caught between two worlds.
It’s been a few years since we’ve seen Michael Mann around these parts. Of course, since Blackhat (2015), Mann has been working on the pilot of Tokyo Vice for HBO Max. He’s also brought back his colossal opus Heat with a novel that acts as both a prequel and a sequel. Now he’s turned his attention to Enzo Ferrari, a figure who has a whole section of controversies in his Wikipedia.
Mann’s film, co-scripted with Troy Kennedy Martin, opens in 1957, almost two decades after the founding of the motor company. In the midst of the beautifully framed rolling hills of Italy, we’re introduced to Ferrari (Adam Driver) as the perfect portrait of a family man. He kisses Lina (Shailene Woodley) and his son goodbye.
As we soon learn, that’s just a false veneer. Lina is a secret lover that everybody but his wife and partner Laura (Penélope Cruz) seems to know about. Still grieving the loss of their own son Dino, their fiery relationship and his quest for perfection on the racetrack, against the backdrop of Ferrari’s financial troubles, drives much of the film.
Many of Mann’s other films are about the thin line between criminal and cop, as if to suggest a commonality to their codes, and that theme is somewhat extended to the structure of FERRARI. If the story depicts the titular figure as someone caught between two self-created worlds – one where he has base desires and the other where he strives for perfection – then this film is one that’s often in conflict with itself as well. There’s a central character study of toxic hyper-masculinity that’s periodically interrupted by racing and vice versa.
Strangely, it’s the latter that doesn’t work as well, filled with a series of confusing shots that had me squinting for Maserati logos to check who was winning. Still, there’s a singular moment in the back of the film that’s a heartstopper and it almost feels as though Mann and writer Troy Kennedy Martin built their entire film around this scene. It’s a devastating scene, one that elicited an audible gasp from the audience (including this reviewer).
Driver is solid in the role, and while his hair and accent might have easily wandered into the realm of parody, he narrowly avoids this for the most part. It’s just that he’s often left untethered by a screenplay that brushes aside great swathes of material, leaving viewers to fill in the blanks. Indeed, sometimes it’s like choosing your own adventure with at least three concurrent narratives that never properly intersect.
FERRARI the film is far from the well-engineered machine that the eponymous figure constantly strove for. At times almost reverential to its subject, and at others it’s simply a film about a figure who managed to get what he wanted despite some fairly major character flaws.
2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Michael Mann | WRITERS: Troy Kennedy Martin (based on the book by Brock Yates) | CAST: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, Patrick Dempsey | DISTRIBUTOR: Neon (US), Roadshow Films (Australia) | RUNNING TIME: 130 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 25 December 2023 (USA), 4 January 2024 (Australia)
