Ferrari

Michael Mann – 2023 – USA

Michael Mann does everything right in Ferrari, a superior racing film to either Rush or Ford v Ferrari. He wisely skips the full lifespan template that makes other biopics – (like Chaplin or J. Edgar) so lugubrious, instead focusing – though with a few brief flashbacks – on the Mille Miglia race of 1957, which the Ferrari team won at the cost of the lives of two drivers and nine spectators. As played by Adam Driver, Enzo Ferrari has zero concern about being likeable – perhaps in similitude of director Mann himself, who is often accused – like Hitchcock and Kubrick before him – of having an unfeeling and clinical style. While Rush and Ford v Ferrari catered to American sentiment and to car enthusiasts in particular, Mann’s film leans into its Italian milieu, with scenes frequently taking place in cemeteries, churches and heavily darkened rooms, where people negotiate in whispers and utter terrible threats. Yes, it does indeed feel like a mafia movie when off the track. The racing sequences are stunning, maybe the best since Grand Prix, including a couple moments of horrifying violence. Ferrari is presented as a man of vision and steely resolve, yet capable of tears in private. He expresses, without apology, the amoral push that racers feel in their souls that makes them repeatedly risk injury and death for the sake of victory. There are no rosy platitudes among the Ferrari team; they all know that they are expected to disregard normal ethics and family duties, and none of them complain or quit. In one sobering but beautiful sequence, several Ferrari drivers are shown ritualistically penning goodbye letters to their loved ones before the big race, fully aware that they may not be alive 24 hours later. Despite the hardness and harshness that Mann depicts in Ferrari and his sphere, there are also moments of poignancy and warmth, such as the opening scene when Enzo pushes his own car down the driveway rather than wake his mistress and son by starting the engine, quite an unselfish gesture from a passionate driver, and a scene during the climactic race in which a star driver takes a few quick bites of a banana during a pit stop, and then hands the rest of it to Enzo, who passes it along the line of his crew until it ends up in the hands of a gleeful, star-struck little boy. Along with May December and Master Gardener, Ferrari is one of my three favorite films of 2023.