The American filmmaker's stunning, beautiful return to the cinema in a gigantic film about the fall of the gods. Adam Driver is tremendously good, but Shailene Woodley is also remarkable.
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In the end credits of Ferrari there is a dedication to Sydney Pollack. He is one of the many souls that traverse this new, imposing and overwhelming film, which marks Michael Mann's return to the cinema eight years after Blackhat. On the one hand, Pollack should be one of the Ferrari producers. Furthermore, behind the facade of the biopic, the film follows (albeit in a more direct way) the same “journey to Italy” as “A Moment, a Life” with Al Pacino in the role of a Formula 1 driver. This film is one of the lesser known pollocks, but one that has a disturbing power and is one of its titles to be recovered. But even with Michael Mann, the sentimental component does not remain on the sidelines and can become explosive. Ferrari is not just a film about Enzo Ferrari, but above all a story that always hovers between love and death: a sudden shot in the house, the secret home in Castelvetro where his second family lives, the almost physical attraction of the racetrack and the race (“Jaguar races to sell cars. I sell to race”), the grave of his son Dino, who died at the age of 24, which for him was not just a daily event, but the illusion of one is a dialogue that has never stopped. Like Enzo Ferrari, Adam Driver often wears sunglasses. The face is there, but it is as if it is viewed through the eyes of others, like Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's film. But it is precisely through these glasses that all the reflections of his cinema take shape again. Ferrari puts the life of the entrepreneur from Modena in the mirror. The incredible strength of the film, as in (almost) all of Michael Mann's, is precisely the ability to go beyond this body, to make his world tangible not only through his surroundings (the families, the factory) and to make his home familiar, but especially with the engine noise, which is a recurring sound and where you could instinctively hear the difference between the Maserati and the Ferrari.
Ferrari is a film about the “fall of the gods,” just like Public Enemy and Ali. At the end of the biography of Muhammad Ali there is the famous meeting with George Foreman in Kinshasa in Zaire in 1974, in which reality is transfigured and takes on a mythical connotation. Here this separation between life and legend is perhaps less clear. But the Enzo Ferrari, designed by Adam Driver's monstrous skill (before him, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman were considered for the role), always walks the line between heaven and hell, success and abyss. And the year in which it takes place, 1957, was one of the darkest periods of his life: his son Dino died a year earlier and there is a constant war of nerves with his wife Laura (Penélope Cruz), but above all his company is on the verge of bankruptcy. In addition, he would like to recognize Pietro, the son he had with Lina Lardi, but is unable to recognize him (an excellent performance by Shailene Woodley, perhaps in her most mature interpretation) and has to face constant attacks from the press who are under him has also given other people the nickname “Creator of Widows”.
Except for the very short first documentary excerpt, Ferrari reconstructs accidents on the racetrack such as that of Eugenio Castellotti during test drives and, above all, the Guidizzolo tragedy at the Mille Miglie with an impressive obsessiveness that has always characterized Michael Mann's cinema The rendition of history has the precision of James Cameron. In addition, it is not known whether Ferrari, based on the book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine by Brock Yates, can be defined as the film of the American filmmaker's life, but it is a project that Man has been thinking about this for at least 20 years; In fact, an article from 1993 already mentioned the director's idea of making a film with Enzo Ferrari and Robert De Niro as protagonists. The wait was rewarded. There are all these unique close-ups of American auteur cinema, where the faces seem enlarged, taking up the frame and exploding normal perspectives. Today, Michael Mann, much more than Martin Scorsese, is, along with Cameron, the only American director who shows us that cinema is gigantic and that its protagonists can grow four, five or a hundred times larger than a normal human body. And in this respect the correspondence between his cinema and that of Orson Welles becomes immediate. Among American films shot in Italy, Ferrari will forever leave its mark, just as Wyler did with “Roman Holiday” and Mankiewicz did with “The Barefoot Countess.” The end. The movie is over, but it's not over yet. Ferrari not only comes to the finish at the right time, but also with the right shot. Just like Miami Vice started in the right place and with the right duration in the disco. It's not just about skill. But it's really instinct, purely animal instinct. The same one that Enzo Ferrari had when he rose from the abyss.
Original title: id.
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Patrick Dempsey, Michele Savoia, Jack O'Connell, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Daniela Piperno, Valentina Bellè, Jacopo Bruno, Domenico Fortunato, Damiano Neviani, Giuseppe Bonifati, Franca Abategiovanni, Marino Franchitti, Luciano Miele
Distribution: 01 distribution
Duration: 130′
Origin: USA, Great Britain, Italy, China 2023
The film review by Sentieri Selvaggi
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