Michael Mann’s long-awaited return to film is embodied in a film that appears to be only more dialogic and sober in its direction than the director’s previous works: in Ferrari, in fact, Mann’s humanist cinematic inspiration is found intact along with a dark, subterranean allusion to death, which actually makes it very compatible with the rest of the director’s filmography. At competitions in Venice 80.
Racing in the street
The return of the great always causes a certain stir. Even more if, as is the case with this ferrari – the new work of such a master as Michael Mann, came out eight years after the previous one. Black hat – the scene of the Venice Film Festival, and the chosen topic, apparently, is far from the usual for the author. After an eight-year-old film as beautiful as it is underappreciated, Mann here seems to change tone and register, moving away from noir territories and embracing a classic biopic that also becomes period drama; the chosen point of view to tell part of the life and entrepreneurial career of Enzo Ferrari is contained in the biographical book. Enzo Ferrari: Man and Machine, written by journalist Brock Yates; a point of view in which the description of the microcosm moving around the character (Modena, who chose it as a symbol, but not only) is at least as important as the facts stated. Facts that, in particular, come from the reality of 1957, in which the dominance of the prancing horse in Formula 1 was undermined by the hiring of a new, noble driver by rivals Maserati, while Ferrari itself, for its part, was in crisis. difficult personal and family moment. In the background, preparations are underway for the upcoming Mille Miglia, on which Drake decides to focus all his efforts in order to return to the top of the automotive world.
funeral film
The automotive genre has seen a definite resurgence of interest from Hollywood producers and the public over the past ten years, especially thanks to a couple of contemporary classics (particularly hurrydirected by Ron Howard, and most recently Le Mans 66 – a great challenge James Mangold) who set the inevitable standard for all future products. The first few sequences are enough ferrari, however, to understand that Michael Mann’s film – while not neglecting the importance of visualization (here also metaphorical) of races – prefers to move mainly in other territories. The deeply intimate nature of the first frames of the film – even in the most paroxysmal episodes, such as the confrontation between the protagonist and the face Adam Driver and wife Laura in performance Penelope Cruz – gives an accurate idea of the atmosphere and themes of the work: the motif of death, the challenge thrown to her and her exorcism, flirting with her, which has always caused motor sports, is central to the work. story. ferrari above all it is a mourning film, and it is in this sense that it is closer to Mann’s previous works than to two titles in the spirit mentioned above: above all, while the latter saw in the foreground the relationship of the pilot himself with the idea of death, here it is the character of the patron who takes on themselves the opportunity to be, by their own labor, the bearer of death for their pilots.
The (anti)hero of everyday life
We see what really evoke the idea of death, in ferrari, from the opening scenes: from that shot fired by the energetic Penélope Cruz towards who by now is just a (poorly digested) business partner, through the bitterness of the protagonist’s mother, who spoke with disarming frankness about the loss of her other son says, that “the wrong brother died”; up to the dialogue of Enzo himself in front of the grave of his beloved son Dino, whose disappearance Laura herself is unable to forgive him. There is a sense of mournful doom in Mann’s film, a mournful foreboding of what is to come that the character’s bravado and composure cannot erase. It is to revive the figure of Enzo Ferrari with an impassive mask, only occasionally showing ripples, to completely fall during dialogues with his two sons, dead and (secretly), hidden in the house of a lover with a face Shailene Woodley – Adam Driver manages to model his game to the fullest; a game that gives substance to a figure whose mythic dimension is constantly relegated to the background (embodied in black and white images – explicit in their fictional nature – that depict the main character on television) to make him a kind of (anti-) daily hero.
Cinema that moves the worlds
Focused on the torment of the icon and the bareness of its fragility – conveyed, among other things, through the meager and judicious use of memories – ferrari this film seems to be more about scripting and acting than other works by Michael Mann: on the contrary, the overabundance of dialogue in the film allows the director to make the most of, as he always knew how, close-ups and very close-ups of the actors’ faces, capturing those tiny modifications of facial expressions capable of literally moving the inner and outer worlds, changing and distorting the direction of history. The loneliness of this man is best reflected in the punctual and reliable description of the society, which, having chosen him as a local hero, is ready to turn away from him, fearlessly branding him as a murderer; the cynical resistance of the character played by Cruz, in this sense, turns out to be a painful necessity, and not a choice dictated by disappointment. It was in the different attitudes of the two characters towards the company that two faces of Italian capitalism, which was only emerging in its contradictions, were highlighted: practical and realistic, on the one hand, cynically naive and dreamy, on the other. The visual rendering of the Mille Miglia best frames the last part of the film, at the climax, in which the sense of inevitability and foreboding mentioned at the beginning becomes more pronounced until it literally explodes in the final part. A visual (and emotional) explosion that will take the breath away even from the viewer familiar with the events, reminding everyone what an extraordinary director is in front of us. Let’s hope this film (re)paves his way into the mainstream of American cinema, which has unnecessarily kept him out of the way for too long.
Gallery
Form
Original name: ferrari
Director: Michael Mann
Country/year: UK, USA, Italy, China / 2023
Duration: 130 minutes
Type: Drama, Biography
Throw: Adam Driver, Lino Musella, Penelope Cruz, Andrea Bruschi, Valentina Belle, Massy Furlan, Giuseppe Russo, Giuseppe Bonifati, Peter Arpecella, Sarah Gadon, Tommaso Basili, Alex Tonti, Andrea Dolente, Brett Smrtz, Eric Haugen, Gabriel Leone, Gianfilippo Grasso Jack O’Connell, Leonardo Caimi, Luca Della Valle, Michelle Savoia, Patrick Dempsey, Samuel Yubinette, Shailene Woodley, Wyatt Carnel
Screenplay: Troy Kennedy-Martin, Michael Mann
Photo: Eric Messerschmidt
Assembly: Peter Scalia
Music: Daniel Pemberton
Director: Andrea Iervolino, Lars Sylvest, Noemi Nakai, Helen Medrano, Thomas Heislip, Laura Riester, John Lescher, Michael Mann, PJ van Sandwijk, Gareth West, Monica Bacardi, Torsten Schumacher, Maggie Chiffo
Production house: Storyteller Productions, Rocket Science, Forward Pass, Esme Grace Media/COIL, Bliss Media, Iervolino & Lady Bacardi Entertainment, Moto Productions, Grisbi Productions
Distribution: Lucky Red
Trailer
