I love the sound of powerful motors. Revving V-8 and V-Twin engines are music to my ears. However, the roar of the 355 horsepower 1957 Ferrari race car, in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” slamming through gear changes, on the track and through the Italian countryside, was like an Italian operatic version of a few of my favorite sounds. I basked happily in it.
I love Penélope Cruz too. Most men do. Here she subverts her stunning looks and delivers a tour de force, scorched-earth performance as Laura Ferrari; probably her best performance ever.
And while I normally feel lukewarm about Adam Driver (except for that delightfully doltish boyfriend he played in HBO’s “Girls” at the outset of his career), I give credit where credit is due: He’s finally come into his own and owns “Ferrari” with an outstanding performance of exceptional gravitas.
The Ferrari Family
Driver plays former race-car-driver-turned-entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari, now in his 50s and so close to bankruptcy that he absolutely must win 1957’s biggest race, the Mille Miglia, a 992-mile, day-long race from Brescia to Rome and back.A victory will put the company that Ferrari and his wife Laura (Cruz) built from the ground up—back in the black. As he tells Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), the newest in his stable of drivers: “You get into one of my cars, you get in to win.”
The movie begins with some misdirection: A tall, silver-fox of a man slipping out of bed quietly so as not to wake the sleeping younger woman who appears to be his wife. On his way out, he stops in another bedroom and caresses the head of his sleeping son. Meanwhile, in another house, a different woman takes a phone call for him and makes up an excuse for his not being there.
When Enzo Ferrari arrives at his villa, wife Laura greets him with a loaded gun pointed at his personage. He has just gone and violated their long-standing agreement: She won’t nag him about his infidelities as long as he’s home in time for the morning coffee, so as to keep up marital appearances in front of the help.
That first woman we saw is Ferrari’s longtime lover, Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley). The boy is their son, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese). Laura Ferrari is blissfully unaware of both of them.
The Ferrari Business
As mentioned, the Ferrari company is threatened with bankruptcy because Enzo spends too much on the racing division. In order to sell more retail cars, the company needs the publicity from winning a major race. And in order to negotiate the necessary outside investment from a larger automaker like Fiat or Ford, Enzo needs full control of the Ferrari company.
However, some of the company legally belongs to Laura. She founded the car company, bearing his family name, with him in 1947. And hell hath no fury like a woman divining, via forensic scrutiny of the books, that not only does a mistress exist, but also a son, and, adding insult to injury, the mistress demands that her son, sired by Laura’s husband, also be bequeathed the Ferrari name.
Will the wife destroy the business in order to destroy the husband to whom she already gave an heir, Dino, who died of muscular dystrophy in 1956 at the age of 24, and whose crypt both of them visit daily? Laura’s mother-in-law thinks Enzo is entitled to an heir—however he can get one. This is actually crux of the drama: a check, and whether or not it’s signed and cashed in a timely fashion.
The Man
Enzo is shown to be a major celebrity, as evidenced by the recognition and applause of a crowd outside an opera house where Enzo takes in a performance of “La Traviata.”
As Enzo, Driver, the 6-foot-two, physically imposing former Marine, is elegantly trim, debonair, and distinctly European in body language, all while simultaneously manifesting a gravitas that causes all who know him, including his wife, to address him as “Commendatore.” He wears his folk-hero fame with dignity and aplomb and provides a stoic public face for the company.
An example of his humor: Chain-smoking driver Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey) half-jokingly requests an ashtray in his racing car. Later, Enzo reminds his pit crew not to splash gasoline on drivers—especially not Taruffi. Because—you never know. Mortal danger can come from anywhere, anytime, and Mann keeps us aware that these complex men live with death as a constant possibility.
The Racing
“Ferrari” is a death-haunted movie in various respects (Enzo lost his father and his brother during the First World War), but mostly from the dangers of auto racing. Mann’s racing scenes are thrilling.
Modern racing fans are used to death, but due to technology, the high-speed wall-crash death of NASCAR’s finest, Dale Earnhardt, looks tame in comparison to the bad old days of European car racing. We’re shown two crashes, both horrendous. Back then, bodies rocketed the length of football fields. A blown tire leads to a car caroming off a telephone pole and scything down nine roadside spectators; body-parts strewn everywhere, resulting in probably the deadest-looking dead person you’ve ever seen in the movies—the visual still bothers me.
The Father
In the same way that Ferrari’s car crashes harmed innocent bystanders, Ferrari’s marital problems also begat an innocent bystander: Piero, Enzo’s son with Lina. Piero is the secret heart of “Ferrari,” and Mann depicts for us a truly wonderful scene of father-son bonding. It’s based on a lesson about the fluid dynamics of gasoline in engines. When the roughly 10-year-old Piero maintains with conviction that the diagram featuring the most efficacy is the most beautiful, the father tells the son a “secret”: “In all of life, when something works better, usually it is more beautiful to the eye.” With this quote, Michael Mann, master of detail, simultaneously offers moviegoers the secret of movie-making itself.
