Fer­rari review – Dri­ver is fan­tas­tic, Cruz is even better

This philo­soph­i­cal­ly rich and sple­net­i­cal­ly vio­lent pas­sion project from Michael Mann was nev­er going to cleave to the rules of con­ven­tion­al Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ing. And Fer­rari, about rak­ish indus­tri­al­ist, engi­neer and one-time rac­ing dri­ver, Enzo Fer­rari, art­ful­ly con­ceals its com­plex engi­neer­ing – and a poten­tial for dan­ger – under­neath a sleek chas­sis. Although it appears like some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from a film­mak­er who’s known pri­mar­i­ly for mak­ing oper­at­ic crime sto­ries, this one places a num­ber of his abid­ing obses­sions in a new frame­work. It has a hero of ques­tion­able moral virtue, an inter­est in the soci­etal appli­ca­tion of machines and tech­nol­o­gy, and it explores the notion of human sac­ri­fice in the name of an abstract macho ideal.

Things open on a slight­ly camp note as we see Fer­rari (Adam Dri­ver) in crash hel­met and dri­ving gog­gles super­im­posed into some archive news­reel while rac­ing one of his ear­ly dream machines. Then we cut to the future, 1957, where the svelte, sil­ver-haired Fer­rari stands at an omi­nous cross­roads in his life, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Direct­ly behind him is the death of his young son and poten­tial heir, Dino, whose depar­ture has rup­tured his rela­tion­ship with wife and busi­ness part­ner, Lau­ra (Pené­lope Cruz).

Ahead is the ques­tion of his secret rela­tion­ship with Lina Lar­di (Shai­lene Wood­ley, mis­cast), with whom Fer­rari has borne a son, though not one who, in cur­rent legal stand­ing, will inher­it his king­dom. There’s also prepa­ra­tions for that year’s Mille Miglia, a cross-coun­try endurance road race that Enzo needs his team to win in order to have brag­ging rights and a finan­cial­ly-fea­si­ble future for his company.

It’s an event­ful year to say the least, and Mann depicts his sub­ject as some­one try­ing des­per­ate­ly to take the extreme emo­tion­al tumult in his stride. But then he asks, is there some­thing wrong with this man? Are his reac­tions mere­ly anti­so­cial or plain psy­chot­ic? First and fore­most, his atti­tude towards death leaves much to be desired. He’s haunt­ed by the death of his son, but there’s a chill­ing absence of feel­ing when one of his dri­vers is involved in a prang. It’s the numb­ing effects of cap­i­tal­ism, the patholo­gies that come from being the boss, know­ing that there’s no room for emo­tion if you want to suc­ceed. And the film is high­ly crit­i­cal of that mindset.

Else­where, the fiery embers of the rela­tion­ship between Lau­ra and Enzo plays out in the tenor of over­wrought clas­si­cal melo­dra­ma, with Cruz in par­tic­u­lar adding depths and dimen­sions to a char­ac­ter who has been forced to exit the race ear­ly. Dri­ver is very good in the lead, pulling back some of the favour lost on his futzed stereo­typ­i­cal take on an Ital­ian in House of Guc­ci. But it’s Cruz who adds the real nitro to this film.

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