Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes:
Ferrari is set during the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle and danger of 1950’s Formula 1, ex-racer, Enzo Ferrari, is in crisis. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for their one son. Ferrari struggles with the acknowledgement of another. His drivers’ lust to win pushes them out to the edge. He wagers all in a roll of the dice on one race, the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the iconic Mille Miglia.
Review:
In Ferrari AdamDriver wears boxy suits with big broad shoulders that make him look taller and rangier than he actually is, makes him look like a tank, imposing and indomitable. It’s very appropriate for a man who makes red hot race cars with sexy curves and supercharged engines.
The movie is set in 1957, a catastrophic and life altering year for Enzo Ferrari. He’l be wining races while losing drivers to horrible accidents and wife and mistress to truths exposed, and possible bankruptcy.
He seems cursed in the way death constantly lingers around him and nearby. He’s worried that he would die without an heir— having lost one son to the war and an illegitimate one with a longtime mistress.
The movie toggles between genres, the melodrama that defines his domestic life and the thrilling racing life. Enzo has a house in Modena and one just outside the city where his mistress lives. The first is a gloomy one, the second bright and airy. The wife, Laura (Penelope Cruz) is a spitfire in the Anna Magnani mode, every bit his equal in toughness,dishing it out and intellect, but jealous and avenging. The mistress, Lina (Sharlene Woodley) is patient, plainer, quietly insistent on their bastard son’s right to the Ferrari name, but otherwise drama free, content to be a bed partner and a chef and a confidant. They are the temperate, tolerant counterpoint to Enzo’s miserable marriage.
Cruz has the more interesting dramatic role. Laura may have been dulled emotionally and spiritually by the death of her son but there are moving echoes of grief that animate the bitter resentment and barely contained rage. There are even echoes of the humor that might have engaged Enzo once, maybe even the joy he felt with her. She’s deeper and more complicated than Lina.
Adam Driver lets you into Enzo. His warmth and decency never fully mesh with his character’s cool, consuming self=interest. He’s hardworking and close-fisted, a quality that gives the performance a threatening violent charisma. The interplay between his existential torrent and the tremendous willed effort to keep himself in check makes for an interesting and unpredictable character.
Enzo is intimidating, sometimes threatening, yet driven and divided. His desire to preserve his business at all costs makes it look like a power grab than desire and ambition. His autocratic mercenariness, disregard for other people’s lives and his car obsession can make him seem cold and cruel. The only time Enzo feels joy is when he’s driving by himself, working the machine to its ultimate performance.
The racing is thrilling. The working, fussing, the time trials, the prelims, the strategizing, and yes, even the races are captured with a nitty-gritty verve and every possible vertiginous angle. There’s Ferrari most pleasurable scenes, one felt in the bones.
Ferrari gets a 3.0 out of 5 or a B.
Credits:
Directed by
Written by
Based on
Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine
by Brock Yates
Produced by
- Michael Mann
- P.J. van Sandwijk
- Marie Savare
- Thomas Hayslip
- John Friedberg
- Monika Bacardi
- Lars Sylvest
- Thorsten Schumacher
- Laura Rister
Starring
Cinematography
Edited by
Music by
Production
companies
- Forward Pass
- Storyteller Productions
- Esme Grace Media
- Cecchi Gori USA
- Iervolino & Lady Bacardi Entertainment
Distributed by
- Neon (United States)
- STX International (International)
Release dates
- August 31, 2023(Venice)
- December 25, 2023(United States)
Running time
124 minutes[3]
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$95 million
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