The Film Buffa: Electrifying ‘Ferrari’ features Michael Mann in top form
Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz are sensational as life-torn partners in car, heart, and soul.
All of us go searching for something that makes us feel alive, and then we have to merge that passion with the rest of our lives. When it came to Enzo Ferrari, he had two passions: fast cars and strong women. Michael Mann shows the Italian car making legend at his most bold and broken in Ferrari, one of the signature ingredients in the filmmaker’s finest film since Collateral.
Played with a confident blend of tenacity and restraint by Adam Driver, Ferrari is a master composer who can’t sleep until he climbs out of massive debt and finds a through line in his personal life. A mad romance torn between two women who take zero shit. Penelope Cruz’s Laura Ferrari is old school fierce, thumping our chest with a dialogue-less stare that could humble the strongest of men. She’s a potent wonder as the woman behind the car maestro who couldn’t forgive him for the loss of their son.
If he doesn’t win the Mille Miglia, a game-changer for funding and credibility in his profession, Ferrari goes bankrupt. Driver matches Cruz’s intensity with quieter yet just as sincere burn. There isn’t a single doubt that he’s Enzo, a complicated figure who required an actor to not overplay the hand.
It’s some of his best work yet, coupled right next to his sensitive yet overbearing Charlie in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, in an already impressive career that’s just ramping up. Driver never feels like he’s overdoing a role; he’s just living there for a little while. It’s as authentic as the film’s true MVP, Michael Mann.
The auteur hasn’t lost a single ounce of pop on his swing decades after blazing a trail with James Caan’s jewel thief, another Mann protagonist seeking refuge amidst the blazing sun of ambition. He’s better than ever with Ferrari because you can tell this film took its time marinating before launch. There’s a passion in its making that’s indelible, like a guy who had something to say. He put an effort into the care of the subject matter: a racing family that wasn’t just built around a single person.
Mann portrays the car company as a two-headed monster, the best laid plans after World War II that quickly went to ruins with the loss of their son. From there, it’s a comeback tale that doesn’t take it easy on the racetrack. What you’ll get in Ferrari are some of the most authentic, non-CGI powered portrayals of the sport that could claim a heavy toll on even the youngest of lives.
It’s in this visceral car violence that Mann climbs to his peak as a filmmaker, eliciting more of the danger of the race than the sheer bravado of winning and losing. Walking away from the Miglia was considered a win; trophies and parties were icing on the cake. Imagine Le Mans with even more curves, countryside, and paralyzing and sudden car trouble. That was the Mille Miglia, and he does it justice.
110 minutes in, Mann serves up cinema’s most brutal race car crash sequence ever. Watch it and tell me if another jaw-dropping stunner like that. That’s honoring the sport, the “dangerous passion” and “terrible joy” that consumed men’s lives and sometimes snatched them right up out of the thinly cut Italian air.
By taking away the usual Hollywood aura of a race winner and placing that energy on the unfortunate tragedies of the race itself, Mann honors the man who walked through that fire and the sport he adored.
Mann also proves without a doubt that the playground he makes movies at still offers something unique and versatile to film. You know it’s one of his movies by not just the plight of man’s genius in its plots, but by the way they make you feel. Ferrari felt alive, as in something made by one guy that no one else could touch.
If I had a quibble, it would be Shailene Woodley’s wobbly Italian accent and not enough Patrick Dempsey, who is having the time of his life merging his two passions with one project. But those are minor infractions with an overall robust experience.
See Ferrari when it comes out on Christmas Day. What a wonderful way to let a family meal digest and take in some Mann-entrusted cinema. Just be ready for that crash scene.
As Enzo proclaims in the film, “two objects can’t occupy the same space at one moment in time.” Unless it’s Michael Mann and greatness.