Ferrari | Racing with Death at the Legacy machinery

“Our deadly passion, our terrible joy."

At this point in a career recognized by telling stories of professional men obsessed with their work, craft, jobs; as their only means of escape, safe conduct and existential value. From gangsters to cops and big historical figures, the Mann’s ‘man’ remains pretty much intact, as does his its unorthodox ways of exploring classic bases of genre films carrying little attention to conventions or formulas that please the mainstream.

Perhaps that’s what impeded him to reach any recognizable success in the late 2000s post Miami-Vice onwards, to his sole one titles released in the last decade Blackhat and for now (hopefully) in the 2020s with Ferrari. That now, after a long creative hiatus, either for very-likely funding issues and god-knows how many distribution production setbacks that came to curse his long-due passion project of bringing his take on Enzo Ferrari into movie form, the end result is definitely not the movie I was expecting, but also...the only possible one that we could’ve gotten!

It takes the form that almost every late film by an older director usually takes, only instead of stepping deep into melancholy, something that was already in abundance in Mann's past films, Ferrari is shaped like a funeral film and the man’s close relationship with death in direct contact with his work about to bankrupt; the ghosts that taunt his life from a deceased son and a bitter wife; and all that will impregnate in his legacy going forward, victory or loss, an recognized heir or a stain in his sinful being.

The initial tone is glaringly somber and a tad bitter, which might be less to do with Mann’s state of mind and spirit and more to do with the script origins. Penned by The Italian Job and Kelly's Heroes writer Troy Kennedy Martin, envisioned way before the 2000s prior to Martin’s death in 2009; there is an almost economical verbiage load in its structuring; letting spared room for contemplation while keeping plot-directness, saving the entire delivery for key moments of cathartic confrontation.

Carrying an almost old-fashioned feel as if it were the type of material that would've been helmed by ostracized from mainstream auteur-directors like Samuel Fuller, Richard Fleischer or Robert Aldrich during their surviving days in late 70s and mid 80s – that well...Mann has pretty much become one by now, so it’s only the natural step for his career; ultimately only getting this movie made in the first place by decades of pushing efforts.

Now removed from all once prestige, these types of films were helmed by guys that just didn’t care anymore. That either got expressed in go-for-broke wild experimentations, lousy uninspired hired-up gig, or deliver something peaceful calm state of longing. The explored materials could vary between mere echoes of their past successes or very traditional dramas. Mann’s Ferrari might ring a predominant domestic melodrama, as the focus heavily relies on the battling of egos between Ferrari and his wife Laura, balancing personal life with his work in direct contrasting confrontation.

It could’ve stick to that and something uninspiredly formulaic would’ve come off, but Mann still has his mojo with him to pepper conventional storytelling with flair, bringing a vivacity either seen in the few but memorably striking race-track sequences; while the rest of the film adopts an approach that’s uniformly elegant, subdued and for all intents and purposes of lack of proper nomenclature: classical.

At face value is formal and traditionalist, but that doesn't mean it's a film that sticks to formulaic script traditions, and avoids the rigidity and conventionality of a biopic, as it constantly subverts the most common places of traditional "biopics". Not only because of the way he chooses to assemble the portrait of this man around a specific part of his life – which in itself is nothing original as other biographies follow the same method (Spielberg’s Lincoln, Boyle’s Steve Jobs), but in how it lays bare the innermost parts of a 'great man' portrayal.

Mann's Enzo Ferrari is not an idealized symbol where the central actor's role (Adam Driver) is to convey famous traces of his persona; is someone vivid, living, their behavioral and psychological traits that are reflected in their personality, being observed closely and on a daily basis. In it, we can see the inspiring and charismatically natural subject which Mann so clearly admires, but also paints the human and tragic being among the bedrooms, living rooms and offices of his intimate.

Where most of the film's 'action' takes place, apart from openly ‘fooling around’ at the failed marriage, he’s cold and calculating in his almost stoic selfishness, while he tries to convince how callous he is to those he has never managed to actually deceive close to him. The constant contradiction is what forms the soul of Mann's Ferrari: a brilliant ambitious creator, taking his mega empire company to bankruptcy; a loving, caring father and a cold, deeply indifferent man who inhabit the same character.

Living in contrasting relations as well: a deceased son that reminds him of his errors and mortality, and the young alive son that is the hope for his future; the wife that reminds him of all the miseries he endured, and the lover that brings him hope and comfort. There’s no whole because he’s constantly in motion, divided, demanded, creating the cold vessel that operates the man and his empire.

Somebody else already got into this before than I did so I can't take the credit for this, but is so true that, in many ways, Mann's film walks in quite similar line as to what Nolan did in Oppenheimer this year: telling the story of men trapped by the burden that their work, their passion, creates in the lives of so many. The destruction they left behind and how the same is framed to the impetus of moving-capital, be it war or car-companies. Its directors idolize and identify with these figures while at the same time not hiding their weaknesses.

Is easy to say that Mann sees himself in Ferrari’s state of an absolute ruthless, competitive, moved by uncontrolled passion and obsession for his craft; but also recognizing what such path takes from a man in life’s grander scheme. Again, it’s only the natural step for where Mann would eventually take his signature as this is pretty much the next chapter of the traditional Mann protagonist: characters with life-long obsessions of loosing grasp of their own lives, control of their conscious self, running out of time and resources.

The man from Thief is the same seen in Ferrari, just in different scales of power and control. What separates James Caan’s Frank from Driver’s Ferrari is where Frank saw bonds of family as essential elements of man to create status and life to call his own next to the profession that makes his living; Ferrari faces it as nothing but collateral burdens. Where one sought to separate the two until he could no more and had to drop everything, the other while facing the personal colliding with the professional, they inevitably merge into one and you can’t tell the difference anymore.

And as expected, and another point very similar to what Nolan made in Oppenheimer, is how Mann involves cinema and art alongside the craft of his explored figure: a reflective mirror of his own craft and art. And more in a connective line because Enzo's work and passion for racing is no different from cinema itself: an incessant search for the form of spectacle and its financial return, a factor of clear importance, but for his protagonist, just means to maintain dream come true. And just as sport like art, both mechanisms of human creation so admirable in their cultural mythification, that they make the cruelest side of the human beings behind them tolerable.

Creating images of respect and influence serve as a façade that stand in the way of extramarital affairs, greed, personal heritage and legacy blend into business continuity. Where even having an heir becomes a capital necessity. Lose one? There's a spare! The fact that there’s this present notion within the film, makes the whole thing all the more repugnant even to the characters living it. That’s why Enzo just shuts off from the world complex mechanics: people, feelings, empathy, carrying; focusing just on the objective: numbers, statistics, trusting solely the machine.

To keep producing these sculpted metal sample of technological art: the cars; where every little second counts to jump onto the next race. His focus and motto is to build them faster stronger moderner, always evolving, because Ferrari, the man / the machine must be kept at flow. The car, the production tooling, the brand are sacred, drivers are merely replaceable!

That’s why just before the big climatic Mille Miglia race, you see the drivers writing letters to their wives and loved ones, recalling a pre-battle ritual, as if they were about to leave to possibly die at the battlefield in a real war. Their lives are merely nothing more than part of the capital revenue to make those dreams come to fruition. Their vehicles are the work of dreams, the inspiring pumping heart of exhilarating adrenaline, and also their metal death boxes.

Success comes at a high toll, a soul-consuming effort whose only income return is a life-span of regrets and open wounds; while death is an always nearby accessible certainty. That’s the mindset running Ferrari, and at the continuous pace where he progressively accumulates misfortune after another, problems arise, tragedies happen and the guy continues operating like a mechanic handling the parts of his life, because again, the machine must keep pumping.

What initially gives the impression of being a film focused on shots of accessories, gears, hands, tools, clocks, etc.; the work utensils of the obsessive-running machinery of the Ferrari machination, the man and his empire; but it ended up being much more about faces and how he frames these faces on the screen, outlining them in the right position where the light and shadows contrast in them reveal all the emotional charge they awaken in the small details, juxtaposed with the music and their visions of happier times formulating the tragic opera of their very present existence. Seen mainly in the brilliant opera scene where the entire cast of characters seem to have a moment of shared longing, with the ghosts that still haunt their minds.

Fincher’s current DP Erik Messerschmidt lits the cinematography with a baroque brushstroke texture worthy of a Caravaggio hidden between its filmic palpability. It has the intimate sensibility that naturally jumps to the fierce tactility present in the race-tracks. Fitting Mann’s recurring handheld camera in over-the-shoulder shots with the camera coupled over the drivers cockpit, bringing an pure unadulterated -“you’re there”- level of immersion through frenzy, visceral, despair, wildness.

Next to editor Pietro Scalia doing equal formidable job, adoptimg classical leisured pacing but bursting the pedal in the kinetic motions of the race track sequences, but shining specially when intercutting between the crackling noise of Ferrari engines with a Catholic mass in one scene, and visions of a happier days, shone through sad / sorrowful faces with looming opera at the background. Eisenstein would be proud! ­

The 20 minute climax of the Mille Miglia race escalates in Mann’s expected technical prowess, in what at first seems old-fashioned taste of glory for Ferrari in his enterprise conflict about to get a symbolic victory; but it culminates in the Guidizzolo tragedy that will make you have a physical reaction. And from there the funeral aftertaste left by the narrative doesn’t leave anytime soon till the credits roll. But maybe… the movie does leave a bit to be desired, especially if you’re a Mann fanatic such as the one writing this words.

Would I’ve liked to see the sprawling historical scale he gave to Ali get replicated here?! Absolutely! Maybe a little bitty more of those white-knuckle amazing races that made what Mangold did in Ford vs Ferrari look like child's play?! I would’ve putted them on a repeat loop next to other Mann’s iconic set-pieces – though the Guidizzolo crash has now become easily one. But still, it remains impressive how he manages to tell its entire well-compressed narrative within the two hours frame, and still make it full of inflictions and somber reflections that the film’s formal presentation doesn’t seem to even threaten to be a possibility here, but they certainly don't leave you post watch!

Be due to the petrified face of Penélope Cruz full of sorrows that’s spine trembling and soul-crushing; or the inability of Driver’s Enzo to be unable to stop for any obstacle or weight carried: his mistakes, curses, even his offspring, everything he loves or believes, he carries hand in hand towards his death, his funeral palace that will become the legacy of his name. It ain’t fulfilling because life usually isn’t, but if it can look this beautiful and chillingly thought provoking, than the craft / art had an impact despite its costs, and the man’s obsession, Mann or Ferrari, have accepted such weight!