Ferrari (Michael Mann, 2023)

Fast car

(Warning: plot and story discussed in explicit detail)

Michael Mann's Ferrari continues his tradition of depicting work-obsessed introverted men but with a key difference: Enzo Ferrari was reportedly more gregarious till the death of his son Dino at the age of 24 from muscular dystrophy. Mann doesn't make the obvious connection, just shows the aftereffects: Enzo depressed and focused on his beloved racing cars with a singleminded ferocity. 

Call this film Mann's speed machine: stripped-down with hulking huge wheels and even bigger engine; black maw of a mouth, hull painted a gleaming rosso corsa. Inside is a lot of noise and little creature comfort, not even an ashtray. 

The film doesn't have the capacity for much baggage. We don't explore the moral issues involving Ferrari's cooperation with the Fascist government during the Second World War, or his appeasement of leftist guerrillas with covert support-- basically covering all bases so his factory can keep manufacturing during and after the conflict. We don't explore the consequences of the 1957 Mille Miglia crash that claimed the lives of nine people including racing driver Alfonso de Portago-- at most a closing title states Ferrari was cleared of all culpability. Did he feel culpable? Adam Driver as Enzo glares wordlessly as his engineers peer into the twisted wreckage, utters a few terse sentences, conducts a press conference, which is about all Mann will allow. Snatch of dialogue from Portago saying he'll have his tire changed at a later stop suggests Mann is throwing some blame on the driver, tho seconds before the crash we see the official explanation sticking out of the asphalt-- a damaged cat's-eye reflector with edge angled fatefully, waiting for the oncoming car wheel. 

This production is approved by the car company, with Piero Ferrari himself giving his blessings; how much dirt are they able to produce on the man? On one hand the film isn't shy about Ferrari's infidelities and deficiencies as a husband (and possibly as father); on the other... well we won't know without more online digging, will we?

Penelope Cruz looking unbelievably gorgeous as 57-year-old Laura Ferrari doesn't hesitate to point out Enzo's deficiencies, to the point of digging up a few herself. If Adam Driver's Enzo is a withdrawn brooder of a man then Cruz's Laura is his firebreathing partner, opening the film with a gun aimed pointblank at his chest.

The woman is terrifying but not a little tragic; Dino's death has affected her too, and she blames Enzo for possible neglect (tho muscular dystrophy is genetic; tho Enzo may have not been as assiduous in administering the child's difficult care; tho this tho that tho the many recriminations a longmarried couple can fling at each other's faces). Laura doesn't hate Enzo indiscriminately; what keeps her anger burning is the love she's had for the man, and her bitterness at how that love has since withered-- given half a chance she'll throw herself at him, over a dinner table at that, and still quarrel with him a few minutes later. Not subtle not elegant definitely not boring. 

The racing sequences I'll presume are the main reason Mann wanted to make this film and they're amazing, not just for the visceral excitement but for the magisterial manner in which Mann orchestrates all elements, from dialogue to music to light to color to the gutclenching way the engines judder through your body. Just the first appearance of one of Ferrari's 355 or 315 or 450 growling through cobblestoned streets makes the hairs stand on the back of one's neck-- these are wild animals, barely kept in check, perfectly capable of biting your head off if you lose focus for even a millisecond. 

Mann directs not just for excitement but for beauty, or the excitement aroused by beauty-- in the Mille Miglia's opening for instance, the cars' headlights as they shoot up a road at night; or the ribbon of asphalt draped across the muscled shoulders of the Gran Sasso d'Italia range as the drivers negotiate narrow curves; or the perfect rows of trees flashing past on either side outside of the town of Guidizzolo, under an impossibly blue sky.

I'm reminded of another late work from another master, Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises-- the two would make for an interesting double feature. Like Enzo, Jiro Horikoshi is obsessed (Enzo with cars, Jiro with planes); like Enzo, Jiro has a dark record with his government, in his case designing fighter planes for the Imperial Navy. In Jiro's case, there's no record of resistance to or awareness of his planes' wartime performance (he expressed regret after the war); in Enzo's case the record is more complicated as it would be for most any capitalist entrepreneur. Miyazaki took an interesting route-- inventing a loving figure (the fictional Nahoko Satomi) and an inspirational figure (the real Giovanni Battista Caproni) to speak to Jiro and help clarify his views; Mann simply stonewalls us on the more controversial issues, leaving them for us to suss out. One takes the more imaginative path, the other the more honest one; one chooses the approach one prefers.