"Ferrari" - Film Review
“Two objects cannot occupy the same point in space at the same moment in time.”
Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is a man torn between two worlds. One foot is in the world of auto racing, embracing the fast-paced, cutthroat lifestyle of speed and co-owning Ferrari with his wife, Laura (Penelope Cruz). The other foot is in the world of father to a young boy, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese). Enzo might be the father, but Laura is not the mother. For years, Enzo has been having an affair with Lina (Shailene Woodley), Piero’s mother. Michael Mann’s Ferrari takes the audience into Enzo’s world as every aspect of his life is teetering on the edge of collapse.
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Ferrari, the company, is nearly bankrupt. The only hope Enzo has of retaining his beloved business is to have one of his drivers win the Mille Miglia. It’s a 1,000-mile race on public roads. Mann’s film is a portrait of a man at his most desperate, when the things and people that are most precious to Enzo are actively slipping through his fingers. Ferrari puts the audience in the passenger seat as Enzo races to the finish line.
The issue with Ferrari is that the man at the center of it is not compelling enough to center this narrative around. Yes, he’s the man who provided the company its name and the leadership needed to make the brand what it became, but the Enzo Ferrari in the film is unemotional and one-dimensional. He’s about to lose everything and everyone he’s ever cared about, but Driver plays him as calm and unbothered at (almost) all times. There’s no sense of urgency at all.
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Driver isn’t alone in his uncomfortably apathetic performance. Most of the characters just seem to go along with the flow. Enzo talks about racing as a passion, yet there’s no fervor in him. Nor is there any from the drivers, the mechanics, the engineers, or anyone on the Ferrari racing team. Without passion and enthusiasm, there’s nothing at stake. There’s no moment that truly feels like Enzo is fighting for his life. The closest the audience gets to seeing some honesty is in one of the conversations between Enzo and Laura. It’s these scenes when it’s just the two of them where Driver seems to wake up and remember what’s on the line for his character. It helps that Cruz is the beating heart of the film.
As Ferrari ambles its way to the finish line, it’s Laura who exemplifies the film’s untapped potential. Ferrari was built by Enzo and Laura. Major financial decisions were made by Laura in a time when women were more seen than heard. She owned half of a company in a sport that is still male-dominated. It was her signature that Enzo needed in order to negotiate a company-saving deal. Perhaps Mann inflated Laura’s true role in the company. It’s something a cursory search on Google doesn’t answer because Laura doesn’t have a Wikipedia page and she’s only mentioned once in Ferrari’s Wikipedia entry. Perhaps that means Ferrari was justified in reducing Laura’s role to that of an angry, grieving woman. Who knows? As the film stalls time and again, it’s easy to wonder what it could have been if a different Ferrari was put in the driver’s seat.
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