Ferrari
STX + SKY
Almost a decade on from the release of the commercial disaster, albeit underrated, Chris Hemsworth-staring Blackhat – go out and watch the ARROW VIDEO directors cut! – famed director Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider, Collateral) returns from his absence with his long-gestured and hotly anticipated thirty-years-in-the-making venture Ferrari. Once touted at a forty million dollar epic with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Noomi Rapace rumoured to star, Mann's Ferrari finds Adam Driver as the titualr Enzo Ferrari suffocating to survive with his namesake, his company and keep his marriage afloat, all while the world closes in around him.
The ten-year absence is an interesting one when watching Ferarri; partly forced, partly self-imposed sabbatical, Mann’s eighty-one years young crafts a feature like someone forty years his junior who has a point to prove. Ferrari is a ferocious and venomous vehicle that sees an aged and wise leader have to vouch and throw himself so deep into his work it unravels through his fingers. Not necessarily unlike the director himself, who after having a home with Warner Bros in the 90s and Universal from the mid-00s until 2015 is now seeking international and smaller companies for financial backing, unable to convince or perhaps accommodate the modern modicum of Hollywood. It is just that sentiment that becomes evidently clear both consciously and subconsciously within the work of Ferrari. After leaving Hollywood amid the MCU and Superhero craze heating to devourment, Mann returns to a different practice and environment in what audiences think they want and what makes production and distributing houses the most economic profit. Ferrari is a feature that is consistently fighting against this very rigid and sadly prosperous regime. Mann is a director who utilises little CGI as possible, opting to re-create 1950s sound design from the source, with humans as close to touching heating metal, suffocating smells of fuel and palpable fear as possible. The result is this miraculously intoxicating, albeit frightening, environment of texture that exudes the emotive prowess of terror but most importantly the understanding of desire and passion to conquer the road, the car, and history. The highs in how Mann documents and visualises said racing is through the aforementioned sound design that is Academy award-worthy from sound designer David Werntz as well as its mixing from Angelo Bonanni. The visual treat is the immersive and utterly engaging camera work amid the racing that depicts the excitement, fear and environment as a passenger, spectator and driver. Crafted with fluid camerawork and swift editing, Mann deploys a consistent manner of claustrophobia and visceral delight that is ever so abundant in immersion and excitement.
This is made all the more important and impacting when Mann has surprisingly hired recent David Fincher NETFLIX collaborator Erik Messerschmidt, who devices quite the flat and visually lacking sentiment with his eye and style. Ferrari is a better example of what Messerschmidt can achieve, but his and Mann's visceral desire for texture is sadly in no companionship and offers a tonal dissonance of thought and feeling. Granted, Messerschmidt crafts a setting that bubbles with life but has no warmth or texture for the day-to-day life of Enzo. No room fills with the smoke of cigarettes, and no fear, sweat and documentation of trauma fill the screen like pastures of old in Public Enemies, Miami Vice or even Blackhat. It is a surprising and somewhat shocking lack of a Mann convention that is left to be desired and, in turn, craves this kind of touch. The result is a far too clean and clinical depiction of a digitalised framework on screen that reinforces the cinematic mirror and never finds ground for being immersed within this project – and thus, story.
Nevertheless, Ferrari is not a feature defined by its application and re-creation of the Mille Miglia race but that of its titular character. Mann's film seeks to identify and evoke the sentiments of a person who is exploring what Ferrari truly means, in that of his name and lineage to bastard son Piero after the death of his firstborn Dino, what the future of his identity will be in the namesake of his company, as well as the trials of his marriage and who Ferrari is as a person. All three story arcs weave in and out of one central storyline but build quite a fascinating portrait of a multifaceted and complicated human being. They are, of course, slightly jarring in-depth and execution due to the optimisation of time aimed to explore such arcs as well as the hinging importance of Mille Miglia upon all three distinctions. The most lacking in depth but dearest in importance to this story is that of Piero and Lina Lardi played by Giuseppe Festinese and Shailene Woodley, respectively. In earnest, it is an arc that bookends Enzo's story in the context of this film but, surprisingly, is pushed to one side with Woodley able to throw in a monologue or two to exert emotional exposition and narrative. Sadly, she is given little to craft chemistry and depth to further pivot towards who she is as a person or back to Enzo himself. Made stranger is that – just like the context of the dynamic on-screen which finds Enzo keeping both his son and mistress away in a form of therapy outside his life away from a crippling company and marriage – it is an outlet that ultimately should be depicted as his haven on-screen in regards to pause and reflection for both the character and the dynamic of the film itself in narrative and emotional framing. This sentiment is abundantly clear from Mann but, along with screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, never really employs a great deal of depth and provocation to intend this ideal to truly suffice or work substantially.
The second arc that works here, both in terms of depth and narrative, is Enzo and Laura Ferrari warring with infidelity and the future of what will become of them and Ferrari overall. Both Driver and Cruz here are given a tremendous amount of shots to fire and evoke an often devastating and emotionally impacting destruction of grief, torment and failure of themselves and each other. While Driver does cater towards this dynamic, it is Cruz who utterly rocks the house with an outstanding and heartbreaking rendition of suffering and anguish. She is not only formidable on screen, but she brings a brutality and organic nature of humanity to a feature that is often exploring the capabilities of machines and engines as well as the opposing bricked-up wall of Enzo. Often left to ponder inside and utilised in the shadows of her home and surroundings of running the empire of Ferrari, Cruz brings forward a ferocious indication of trauma. With her son's death a year before the film starts, her husband's infidelity, the bankruptcy of the company, as well as the further knowledge of an heir, Cruz has a great deal of internal pain to showcase from Laura in an external performance that devastatingly succeeds in giving precedent to the suffocating events that are surrounding her and Enzo.
It equally, advertently so, gives a great deal of precedent to the arc of Driver's Enzo and gives a great amount of emotional context and content without the actor even having to remotely pull a muscle. The first would be the emotional sticism that he employs which, in contrast to Cruz's Laura, is severely more guarded and switched off. In turn, this creates an interesting layer of questioning and emotional indication of the archetype of male grief in self-imposed ignorance and emotive arrogance to not engage. It is a soft but gruelling ideal that Driver brings to the table while exploring Enzo and showcasing the complicated nature of the character without consciously stating so. One such scene which excels and defines said motif is one early sequence at his late son's grave in which in one whole minute he is reserved, then emotionally devastated and then covers himself figuratively in emotive restraint – allowing the devil of emotion to peak itself through in a moment of empathy and be susceptible to a human being. It offers a great deal of comparative context to other scenarios of emotional turmoil the character engages within the notable trauma of death that surrounds him in which he barely bats an eyelid. It is this arc that is arguably the most important lynchpin for the feature overall. Not only to understand who Ferrari was but his intentions in understanding what the name, value and principle of Ferrari meant to him. It means sacrificing the namesake of his son, the sanctity of his marriage, and the future of his company all in the need of a complicated and multifaceted emotional human being.
That being said, like the previously mentioned visual texture that is lacking, equally as underwhelming and restraint is Mann's use of score within Ferrari and his devastating musically inspired finales. Ferrari lacks both sentiments and conventions of Mann's cinematic prowess, which is surprising twofold. The rapacious emotional motif of the latter is one that, without being in a Mann film, just falls severely flat and somewhat uninspired, not quite earning the emotionally impacting nature to the film that has proceeded, be it Auto Rock in Miami Vice or Moby in Heat, even a more score-inspired send off of JD Dies in Public Enemies or Harry Gregson-Williams finale in Blackhat. Mann opts to use the mundane and often uninspired score from composer Daniel Pemberton to suffice in areas to elevate the material and arcs, which feel both underwhelming and lacking. Aside from one pivotal scene in the film's third act, which is nothing short of devastating, Pemberton's score never gets out of first gear and often fails to elicit a heightened mood upon events that need a second wind of emotional conviction, be that of the romantic soft arc of Piero and Lina Lardi or the uncomfortable anguish of Laura Ferrari, in both cases, Pemberton fails to find ground.
Ultimately, Ferrari is a different film from the ideal of what a Michael Mann film is, both in terms of thematic and visual visceral prowess. Perhaps it is an indication of rust on Mann's part due to the decade of cinematic inactivity, but all in all, perhaps it signifies a creative fighting a battle against a system that has significantly evolved in the last ten years. Only ninety-five million dollars for a Michael Mann feature it seems implausible for domestic US distribution and production houses to lap up, but it is slowly becoming a bygone era for the likes of Scorsese, Scott and Mann, who are fighting an unwinnable and uphill battle but do so with eagerness, hope and willingness: a sentiment that should not go unnoticed. Nevertheless, to have the honour of witnessing a fresh and new Michael Mann feature film at the cinema after a ten-year wait, and to see that title card of "Directed by" for what will be one of the last audiences privileged to witness, is certainly a poignant and delicate sentiment to absorb and to truly cherish.
