Movie Review: Ferrari is a film that achieves its goal with a lot of effort

Biopics based on the life of a celebrity have been very fashionable in cinema, books, and television series, this causes expectation and morbidity among locals and strangers, having these stories that range from the interesting and dark to the fanciful and unrealistic. .

The world of elite motorsport is a separate topic, according to the history books in this area, the birth of the automobile as such is taken as the date of January 29, 1886, the day on which Carl Benz patented his gasoline-powered vehicle with three wheels.

After this, there have been many who have presented and revolutionized the industry as an effective and economical means of transportation, but there are others that are high-end, including Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, Porsche, DMC, and Ferrari, luxury cars. ranging from limited series to unique classic pieces.

Ferrari cars have been present in the world of entertainment with the most popular being the Red Ferrari 308 GTS used in the television series Magnum P.I. starring the actor Tom Selleck (1980-1988) or the Ferrari Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona and the White Testarossa that were the delight of locals and strangers.

Ferrari has stood out for having a very particular emblem, a horse that stands on its hind legs, a symbol that was part of the Baracca family shield and that has also been used in Scuderia Ferrari in its sports car division in charge of the motorsport competitions in Formula 1.

In 2024, director Michael Mann brings to the big screen the tortuous life of the Italian Enzo Ferrari, former racing driver and businessman of Italian motorsports and founder of the Scuderia Grand Prix and the brand that bears his last name.

What is the movie about?

During the summer of 1957, behind the spectacle of Formula 1, the former driver Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is in crisis and his automotive company that he built together with his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) is about to go bankrupt. This marriage has also been affected. Due to the loss of his son Dino and the recognition of Piero (Giuseppe Festinese) a son born out of wedlock and conceived with Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), Enzo must face financial pressure to increase productivity which means going against his old desire to produce only racing cars and enter a more commercial field coupled with this are its drivers who want to win the difficult 1000 mile race through Italy, an event that will put them on edge between triumph and failure.

The idea of bringing to the big screen the life of a man who designed and started from nothing an emporium that lasts to this day is interesting to see, a topic that was controversial in its time and that put this historical figure in the spotlight. of the hurricane not because of his creations but because of his scandals that in Italy in the 50s represented going against everything established by a conservative and purist society.

There is no doubt that the choice of Michael Mann (The Last of the Mohicans – 1992) as the director of this film has been most successful, he has convincingly explored and without unnecessary embellishments the personality of the challenging man who has managed to succeed. and even more so when it comes to revealing the imperfections of Enzo Ferrari, a man who was willing not to let himself be defeated or lose what he had built up to that point.

The controversy that his vehicles caused in the races in which they participated was to obtain the winning trophy and maintain the speed record that put others in danger or the specifications of the automobiles that he constantly supervised and updated to obtain an extra half-second advantage over the competitors. other competitors, the image that this director intends to show us is that of a human being dissatisfied with what he has and with the idea of being able to do something better every time to improve himself and that something is wrong with his ambition and thirst for power which will eventually lead him to experience personal tragedy and unimaginable pain firsthand.

It is equally interesting how this film goes from being biographical to a profound drama about a man who finds it very difficult to maintain the course of his life by doing even the impossible and what is not allowed to resolve his personal and personal problems in the best way. professionals, an approach that goes straight to being a disaster and that manages to be saved by their ingenuity and skill.

As is often the case in this director’s films, the emotional pressure to which he subjects his characters is beyond what any average human being could face, a point at which we do not know where reality ends and fiction begins. , here we see how Ferrari tries to preserve the affection he feels for the two most important women in his life, on the one hand, his wife Laura and on the other his lover Lina with whom he has had an unrecognized son, this is on par with We know that he has recently lost the son he had with Laura, which means that this marriage is becoming more separated every day.

The film takes us in 1957 when the main character is approaching 60 years old and struggles to maintain control over an industry that is becoming more competitive every day. For some, he is a hero and for others, he is just another braggart who wants to stand out at the expense of All in all, the film begins with an effort to break a speed record, something that Ferrari knows could have serious consequences for its company that is on the verge of bankruptcy, which is focused only on sports cars and not on the production of vehicles. commercials that can be sold to stay in business.

The story centers on an older man who considers his legacy after losing his heir, having a child out of his marriage whom he cannot publicly acknowledge, and making the difficult decision to save his company or save his marriage, Ferrari is presented as a complex man with a tortuous life, full of complexes, contradictions and insecurities, a man who often mourns the loss of his son and the lack of interest in his wife who sees her more as a companion, a man who He tries to take responsibility for his decisions and his actions, for the death of his son, an austere and rigid man incapable of doing anything beyond what it means to selfishly have his success.

In the first 25 minutes, they establish the story and its characters and on this, the subplots are developed such as car racing, his infidelity, death, and how to maintain a legacy that was just beginning, all in a dramatic tone that It becomes something more fictional than biographical, we understand first-hand what Ferrari’s interests are and what those of his wife and his lover are and everything ends up in a semi-love triangle in which it is very predictable to know that there will not be a winner.

The script written by Troy Kennedy Martin takes many liberties in terms of the development of a character who aims to be controversial and sensitive at the same time but who has great aspirations and who suffers from a constant struggle with himself between what he should and what he can. do, between what is allowed and what is not, between being a successful man or failing in the attempt, and who is not prepared for any of these things, focuses too much on the drama and does not explore in detail all the creativity he had to design, plan, modify and develop these impressive vehicles, its biggest failure is wanting to be more dramatic than biographical, leaving out all technical aspects.

The film is exciting in very few moments and fails in what is supposed to be an exciting third act where we see the impressive shots that Mann takes of the race taking it to a point where as viewers it places us more within a film of action, it is unfortunate that having a different cinematographic experience the latter does not manage to have an exciting closure and is left alone in an attempt to show how difficult it can be to break a speed record and win a trophy, its moral speech is focused on the importance of family, love, and attachment, the effort to succeed but this is diluted and loses credibility and importance in the face of issues such as that it is not important to compete but to win, financial success is more important than everything else, something that is present and very constant.

The 3 acts that make up this work feel unbalanced, the first is slower in locating who is who, the second presents couple and business conflicts, and for the third what we want to see are these cars in all their splendor so that it concludes with data interesting about how it has evolved and has also transformed into a high-end commercial line with innovative designs that are already a classic in the world of motorsports and a brand that is iconic to this day and that does not happen.

The film becomes clumsy in its narrative, too much time is wasted on details that are not relevant, and by its end, it feels rushed in trying to close all the subplots in a convincing way that leaves us satisfied, it is worth mentioning that making a Work that requires too many dynamic shots outdoors is difficult and relies heavily on the use of CGI to give more dynamism to the race, something that looks and feels fake but is intended to be spectacular.

The production design desperately tries to recreate the 50s with all the European glamor and at times this is diluted with the costumes that seem out of time and fail to have a convincing balance between classic and modern, a mixture of ideas and fashions that fall more into the fictional than the real.

It must be recognized that one of the strongest points of the film in terms of visuals is the photography by Erik Messerschmidt who, together with Mann and the editor Pietro Scalia, give a new concept to the drama as well as the racing scenes. This contribution could be more interesting and that remains only as something worthy that maintains a film that has already lost rhythm and interest since the second half.

The cast is made up of Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, and Patrick Dempsey, good actors who have very uneven performances and character development, while Driver is exaggerated Cruz is more focused and at times It is the support of a story that is not its own, the same happens with the dialogues that at times feel exaggerated and unnecessary and at other times say too much with just a few words.

The music composed by the British Daniel Pemberton has pieces that advocate a lot for the Italian nostalgia of the 50s and others that sound too modern and outside the time in which the events take place, a work that separately can be very enjoyable but that has problems when placing us at any specific moment in history.

In conclusion, Ferrari as a complex film with a very simple theme, as a drama works better than as a biopic what is sought with this is to have a broader overview of what this man contributed to the European and global automotive industry, this is not the case here. We will find it, it is a clean work that audiovisually could have been better if it did not have the Ferrari surname that sells us something very different from what we assumed it would be, a film that manages to get ahead and reach the goal with a lot of effort that in the end contributes very little and entertains more.

Ferrari is already out in cinemas in our country.