Ferrari
During the summer of 1957, former race car driver, Enzo Ferrari, is in crisis. All the dramatic forces of his life are in collision. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for one son and the acknowledgement of another. Enzo decides to counter his losses by rolling the dice on one race – 1,000 miles across Italy, the iconic Mille Miglia.
- Released:
- Runtime: 131 minutes
- Genre: Drama, History
- Stars: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Patrick Dempsey, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O'Connell, Michele Savoia, Valentina Bellè, Tommaso Basili, Andrea Dolente, Lino Musella, Brett Smrz, Massi Furlan
- Director: Michael Mann
Comments
- Sebas72 - 24 June 2024
A soap opera about Enzo Ferrari
How can you make a film about Enzo Ferrari and show so little about his passion for cars, his rivalries, his expertise, his taste, his relationship with drivers, his legacy? Who thought that it would be a good idea to focus only on his marital life? It's probably because the geniuses that made this film must have assumed that women (the female audience) would rather see a romantic melodrama instead of watching a movie about the most iconic name in the car manufacturing and racing world. The result, an unbearably boring and dark romantic drama. The worst bit, the romantic side does not work either. It's all about marital quarrels and zero passion and actual love. What a waste of time, talent, energy and money. - Irene212 - 6 June 2024
The wrong son died (twice)
Enzo Ferrari is quoted as saying "the only perfect love in this world is that of a father for his son." He's wrong, of course (any such sweeping statement would be wrong), but it's a good intro to this movie, which is about men, start to finish (to use racing lingo), which probably factored into poor box office numbers. Maybe it will find the audience it deserves on smaller screens, because director Michael Mann is in top form here. Shot in Italy, "Ferrari" is a convincing portrait of a man whose life is divided between a sustained passion for fast cars and (because divorce was illegal in Italy until 1970) a double life as a family man.
Adam Driver delivers a finely controlled performance as Enzo Ferrari, somber at age 59, in the months following the death of his beloved older 24-year-old son, Dino. It is almost an echo of the death of his own brother in 1916, referred to in a scene when his mother Adalgisa (Daniela Piperno) says, "The wrong son died."
The racing scenes are extremely well done, especially the depiction of the crash of a Ferrari in the 1957 "Mille Miglia" road race, a tragedy so horrific that, within a week, the Italian government banned racing on public roads. The driver, aristocratic playboy Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), and his navigator were both killed, which is a risk they knowingly took, as did Joseph Göttgens, a Dutch driver who was fatally injured in the same race in a Triumph TR-3. But the Ferrari crash also took the lives of nine spectators, five of them children, and injured twenty more. Mann's staging of that crash is like a gut punch. The speed of that airborne car hurtling through bystanders-- my breath left my body as I watched. Then I braced myself and watched it again, to see how it was done. Extraordinary.
As for the private Ferrari, the most engaging scenes involve Enzo and his 12-year-old son, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese), whose mother was Enzo's inamorata, Lina Lardi. Shailene Woodley plays her well, being loving and patient, but it is a passive supporting role.
Wife Laura Ferrari (Penélope Cruz) is another matter. We meet her wielding a gun, which she fires at Ferrari, purposely missing, and he doesn't even react. Nor did I. She was instantly dismissable as an unappeasable Italian hellcat. A cliché. She spends the movie in a fury, either sulking or screaming. I felt little sympathy for her, and none when she belligerently blamed her husband for their son's death, even though he was equally devastated, and had done everything he could to save Dino. It's a man's picture, fine, but if you get Penélope Cruz to play a major role, give her a character to play. - jjk488-1 - 25 May 2024
A good example of how not to make a movie on Ferrari
It feels like they went out of their way to make this movie as slow and boring as possible, especially given it's subject matter. The pacing just felt way off the entire time, having these long scenes that just seemed to drag on forever focused on drama, with the action being far too brief. I think they did a pretty good job of trying to display Enzo's personality, but there was just too much in the way of what felt like filler drama. Worst thing is how it's naturally an exciting and interesting subject matter focused on a historic and exciting sporting event, but you hardly get to enjoy it between all the drama that just felt unnecessary and didn't do much for me. When I compare this to something like Ford vs Ferrari, it's like that's a movie that I could watch over and over again, while with this it's a one n done.
