From Venice 80 our review ferrarinew film in competition Michael Mann With Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Patrick Dempsey AND Shailene Woodley: such a sentimental Mann has never been seen
Eight years have passed since the misunderstood but dazzling Black hat and finally here in Venice 80 we witnessed the return of the master Michael Mann With ferrari. A non-biographical film that tells about a year in the life of a seer. Enzo Ferrarigrandson of the eponymous founder of the historic car brand put here Adam Driver along with a cast that includes Penelope Cruz, Patrick Dempsey, Shailene Woodley and Jack O’Connell.
Mille Miglia
Emilia-Romagna, 1957 Ferrari is not having a very good time after the production of new models has stopped and the car manufacturer can no longer win important competitions. Enzo Ferrari (ur.Adam Driver) thus decides to enter and win the Mille Miglia with the help of a team of drivers led by Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey). Meanwhile, the pressure of his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) about their marriage and how the same company she co-owns continues to grow while his sweetheart Lina (Shailene Woodley) is increasingly dissatisfied with the fact that he has a good spare wheel.
Unreleased Michael Mann
Of course, it cannot be said that the films Michael Mann really warm: between the use of digital, often saturated photography, but with cold colors, and a general attention to the emotional side of the characters, which is not so obvious (but always present), it was difficult to expect from the director to reveal so far feel like in this film. Will it be an Italian air or will it be the need to try and experiment with something new even in such a genre as a biopic (even if the director himself does not quite rightly consider it as such), already decided in Ali nose ferrari we are witnessing the unpublished side of the American director.
Here the colors are warmer and softer, the background music is more pronounced and almost sweet, but Mann’s human beings remain the same. slaves of a dead end from which they are desperately trying to get out. Enzo and Laura’s marriage has actually been hanging in the balance for years, but neither of them seem to have the courage (or will) to cut that thread, nor does the not-so-secret relationship between Enzo and Lina, which drags on waiting for that he was finally able to get out of the cage of respectability and hypocrisy.
ghost story
However, the story of Enzo Ferrari is not a story of revenge on a man and his family for the result of the race and, therefore, the movement going forward into the future. but how this person should be freed from the ghosts of the past and (again) a burdensome family, a mother who openly hates him, a wife with whom there is no longer any relationship. So it becomes a painful movie ferrarithe work that leaves a trace of this pain makes it perceived, but never fully felt, also thanks to the monolithic interpretation of Adam Driver, on whose face it is impossible to leave at least some trace of feeling.
These are exactly the ghosts that Mann and his screenwriter have. Troy Kennedy Martin it is interesting to say why there is no moment in the film when you do not breathe in the sharp smell of death, the end opening up to a new beginning; it is not really a coincidence that ferrari closes in a cemetery, and that his most emotionally devastating episode concerns a very serious accident that happened to Guidizzolo. But in this biopic, which, however, is dedicated only to a specific year of the life of Enzo Ferrari, ghosts are primarily ghosts of inadequacy and unhappiness that threaten to destroy the family, home, reputation.
Long haul
The roaring cars we see on the screen reflect the turbulent years of Italy, which was moving towards a hopeful future through an economic boom, but also changes that become private from epochal, because even all the characters in the film ferrari want or need, one way or another, change. And so Mann uses his favorite speed and a little of that hyperkineticness that distinguishes him to pollute his own film, which from the classics becomes modern, which then escapes, then returns, who takes risks more than once, not so much in what he says, but in how he says it.
And it’s a long race, a race to a new freedom, a race on a sun-drenched dirt road or at night to the next Mille Miglia: there are those who run to avoid pain, there are those who run towards a new self-realization, and there are those who run, because they just can’t help it, no matter what happens. The important thing is that, in the end, we are faced with the past and with those ghosts (again) that we decided to choose. ferrari opens and closes in front of the grave, the same one, but it is in the finale that we understand why: to come back to life, you always have to somehow accept the possibility of death.
ferrari. Directed by Michael Mann and starring Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Patrick Dempsey, Shailene Woodley, Gabriel Leone and Sarah Gadon, it will release on November 30 and be distributed by 01 Distribution.
VOTE:
three and a half stars