“Ferrari”: Michael Mann’s long-awaited film
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Ferrari, the story of three months in the life of the legendary racing driver and tycoon, is being released in Russia. The long-awaited, first film from the great Michael Mann in eight years – with spectacular car racing and Adam Driver – is rather discouraging.
Modena, northwest of Bologna, spring morning in 1957. “Mom didn’t really want to get in. She missed on purpose…” Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari (Adam Driver), the famous racer, designer and founder of the automobile empire of his name, sits – like every other morning for a whole year – in the family mausoleum at the grave of his little son Enzo and talks. Today he is trying to explain to the dead boy why at dawn, during another kitchen showdown, his mother Laura (Penelope Cruz), in a fit of bad feelings, shot at his dad with a revolver that she was once given for self-defense. That same evening at dinner, with very similar fatherly intonations, Ferrari tells another boy, quite lively and keen on drawing, about the structure of the internal combustion engine and promises to get an autograph from the famous racer. The boy’s name is Pierrot, his mother is Lina (Shailene Woodley), and all of Modena – with the exception of Laura – has known since the war that the secret head of their family is Enzo Ferrari. So, in any case, it is generally accepted. It is generally believed that Enzo is guilty of the death of his friend, the famous racer Eugenio Castellotti, who just crashed on the Modena highway. The newspapers are full of headlines: “Castellotti died because of Ferrari’s arrogance”, “Ferrari is an industrial Saturn devouring its children” and even “Ferrari is a widow maker” (despite the fact that Castellotti was not even married). The company with a rearing black stallion on its emblem was already facing the threat of bankruptcy. To avoid it, you need to sell as many sports cars as possible to the rich, and in order to present them in all their glory, winning the Mille Miglia race is the best way. “A Thousand Miles” is a route legendary since the time of Mussolini, passing through the whole of Italy on public roads with a constant accumulation of enthusiastic public on the roadsides, who perceived the race as a miracle (as Fellini would later show in the corresponding episode of “Amarcord”). The countdown has begun. Sports cars that look like Christmas toys are winding up training miles on the driveshaft, elegantly dressed men do not take their eyes off the stopwatches, and in the depths of Enzo Ferrari’s eyes hidden by dark glasses, the light of “fatal passion and murderous joy” that was extinguished during the time of losses and troubles begins to gleam.
Despite its almost defiant traditionality, Michael Mann’s Ferrari subverts most of the most obvious expectations. This is not a full-fledged biopic in the usual sense. The action covers only three months from the hero’s life (the shooting of the film itself lasted exactly that long), so those who are interested in his biography in a somewhat more complete manner can turn to the solid 2003 Italian television film with Sergio Castellitto. As for auto racing, with very few exceptions, it (as, indeed, almost everything related to cars as such) remains behind the scenes, so fans of all types of “racing films”, even with Steve McQueen, will be equally disappointed , even with Vin Diesel. And everything else was taught more than restrainedly. Even the sun-drenched, bucolic Italian landscapes – almost the first time since The Last of the Mohicans (1992) that the committed urbanist Mann fully ventured into nature – were shot by Eric Messerschmidt (Mank and “Murderer” David Fincher) extremely casually and as if through smoky glasses. That is, exactly as Enzo Ferrari himself saw the world around him, who during his long life rarely left his native place unnecessarily.
But perhaps least of all, Ferrari feels like a dream film that sets out to make a statement about something truly important. Moreover, the history of its creation indicates that for Mann it was a project of just this kind. The director first began thinking about the film at the turn of the millennium, when two of his films in a row based on real events and characters – “The Insider” (1999) and “Ali” (2001) – received a total of nine Oscar nominations. . But the next time they remembered Ferrari was only in 2015. Initially, Christian Bale was in contention for the title role, but already at the beginning of the preparatory period, crippled by covid restrictions and ultimately stretching over an entire five-year period, he was replaced by Hugh Jackman, and in February last year, Adam Driver was cast in the role of Enzo Ferrari, for the second time since “The House of Gucci” (2021) by Ridley Scott appeared on the screen in the role of the famous Italian creator-businessman with God’s gift, family problems and a love for dark glasses (it’s a pity that no one has yet thought of continuing this direction in Driver’s career and has not called him for the role , say, Dino De Laurentiis). While the project was once again idle, Mann, apparently in order not to lose spirit, became one of the producers of James Mangold’s film Ford v Ferrari (2019), where Remo Girone (aka Tano Carridi from the series Octopus) briefly appears as Ferrari “). Knowing all these details, it is all the more difficult to understand and believe that the great director for the last quarter of a century was excited by this – and in this particular way told – story.
However, without any exaggeration, there is still one outstanding, in the literal (and not the best) sense of the word, stunning moment in the film. During the same “Thousand Miles” race, which Ferrari places great hopes on throughout the film, not far from the village of Guidizzolo, a wheel of a Ferrari team car exploded at full speed, and the car was thrown into a crowd of onlookers, resulting in the death of the racers and 11 local residents , including children. This accident is shown in all its monstrous, repulsive and bewitching splendor, and would certainly have shocked both the heroes of Cronenberg’s “Crash” and stuntman Mike from Tarantino’s “Death Proof” to the core of their souls and bodies. It’s actually effective, creepy and effective. And it’s perhaps no less breathtaking than the classic episodes of the “real” Mann, the obsessive-compulsive visionary, author of “The Thief” (1981), “Heat” (1995), and even “Collaborator” (2004). The only difference is that the accident near Guidizzolo takes about ten seconds in the film. But the classic bank robbery scene from the same “Heat” kept the viewer in exactly the same tension for twelve and a half minutes.
In theaters from December 21
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