This is not Ferrari as we know it. Adam Driver, literally, drives one of the most complex cine biographies of these last years.
Last month, the new Michael Mann (Heat) movie came out: Ferrari! The production is very different from what we used to see and delivers great performances, a consistent story, and beautiful landscapes. Even if it got a 72% critic approval on Rotten Tomatoes, Ferrari is a biography that makes you forget that it is one.
The movie tells the story of Enzo Ferrari in 1957 when his company was in crisis. Ten years before, he and his wife, Laura, built this Scuderia, but the failure took over it. Facing this financial and marriage crisis, Ferrari decides to stake everything in Mille Miglia, an Italian famous race.
More of enzo, less of ferrari
Based on Brock Yates´s book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine, the script focused on a given time of Enzo´s life. For that reason, the public is invited to get to know more about how this Italian Scuderia and its owner were in the 1950s.
At that time, Ferrari is immersed in a financial collapse, in mourning for the death of his son and a double love life, needing to figure out how to get off this tragic moment. The character is complex, and cold but human and the choice of bringing Adam Driver for this role was a great hit.
Driver gives that aesthetic of a powerful man, who is successful but, internally, has a lot of problems to deal with. He is a human that makes a lot of mistakes, in the company’s decisions and private life, and, because of his stubbornness, they get even bigger over the years. An example is his reluctance to close a deal with Fiat to sell more commercial vehicles to pay off the expenses of the racing cars.
Also, Enzo is not a sensible and generous person. On the contrary, he can be very rude if he wants to. In the scene in which the character Laura asks him if he has another woman, he shows to be a very insensitive person when answers her. Adam Driver passes this coldness handily, but sins at the moments that need more emotion.
Another great point of the movie is the fact that it is not a hundred percent about motorsport, but rather about the creator of one of the most famous automobiles in the world. Ferrari tells Enzo´s story, not the Scuderia´s. It is a sports movie that does not focus on the races and the cars.
Actually, they get more background as a support for the plot than as a protagonist, something that other movies don’t do. The races and the cars only get more time on the screen from the middle to the end of the movie, which is when the Mille Miglia happens.
This is the reason why this cine biography had a lot of arrangements. It’s a movie that catches attention by telling an old Italian man’s history and how he got success in the automotive world, without appealing to high-speed cars, even though they are a very interesting part.
True love x partnership
Besides his professional life, Il Commendatore keeps two different women in his life: Laura Ferrari (Penélope Cruz) and Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley). The marriage is also in crisis while the life with Lina, the lover, is full of love and some charges, like the one about baptizing his bastard son.
The struggles of the marriage with Laura begin after the death of their son, Dino. After that, the “mother of Ferrari” gets into a real depression and the cheating of her husband contributes to her emotional state. However, Laura is more than just Enzo´s wife, she is also the Ferrari´s owner. She is responsible for taking care of the financial section of the company and is such an important piece for the Scuderia´s functioning.
Mrs. Ferrari is a strong, also stubborn, determined woman and it is more a partner of Enzo than his wife. All of that was so well seen and understood by the incredible performance of Penélope Cruz. The actress steals the scene by giving the emotion that Driver couldn’t. Cruz incorporates all of her character’s passion and madness and delivers another amazing act.
The public can feel Laura’s pain and anger with everything happening in her life. Penélope also knows how to express a relationship where the love is over and what stays is a partnership. On the other side, there is Lina, interpreted by Shailene Woodley (The Fault in our Stars). The lover is a kind of safe space for Mr. Ferrari.
In this way, Enzo insists on spending time with Lina Lardi and their son, Piero. Their relationship is so different from the one with Laura and is marked by love, friendship, and affection from both sides. The only tension between them is the pressure that Lardi puts on Ferrari to baptize Piero, even if it is against Laura´s desire.
high and low points:
This production is marked by so many highlights and one of them are the beautiful Italian landscapes. The scenes of Mille Miglia are all filmed in varied scenarios, which ones are the real protagonists of the scenes. During that, the spectators are inserted into the screen and can admire Modena´s natural beauty.
An additional high point of the filming is the way that the Mille Miglia scenes are interspersed with tense scenes. In other words, while they show the race, they also put on Ferrari dealing with his financial problems. It was a good strategy to give more movement to the story.
Although there are all these highlights, the movie also erred in some details of the history. The low point is the way they developed the end of it. From the middle to the end, the movie is speeded up and a lot of events don’t get an appropriate end. Because of that, the public doesn’t know what happened after the Mille Miglia accident and all its consequences. Also, there is no way to know if Ferrari closed the deal with Fiat.
In conclusion, Ferrari is a complex, dramatic and different production. The good acting and the scenario are the high points of it, just like the script. The end has a lot of loose ends and, because of that, could be more elaborated and explained. Even so, it is a good option to know more about the iconic Enzo Ferrari.
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The article above was edited by Larissa Buzon.
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