Wednesday June 19, 2024
It’s not that the film doesn’t have a fairly conventional structure throughout, but the focus and ambition in the direction and script of Troy Kennedy Martin They elevate the film.
Through Ferrari (2023), the filmmaker portrays his favorite protagonist: a selfish, methodical and obsessive antihero who lives outside of a self-destructive ambition. And although Ferrari is not conceived as the typical polythief of Mann – Thief (1981), Fire against fire (Heat, 1995) or Miami Vice (2006), to name one masterpiece per decade – the film exudes its unmistakable energy of melancholy and imminent danger.
In 1957 Ferrari (Adam Driver) has just lost his son, the death of several friends hangs over him, his company is on the verge of bankruptcy and his domestic life is precariously balanced between his wife and partner Laura (Penelope Cruz) and his lover Lina (Shailene Woodley), with whom he has secretly produced a bastard son that he loves but does not want to acknowledge. Every facet of his life is fraught with tension and threatens to go bankrupt at any moment: what if the company dies independently or enslaves himself seeking help, what if he can sponsor pilots without also demanding their sacrifice, what if he must choose between a dead son or a nameless heir.
driver plays Il Commendatore like a gray, mourning man who somatizes the enormous emptiness he carries inside in the visceral need not only to succeed but to have absolute control. The actor gives a characteristically intense and taciturn performance but the film limits the study of the character to his “lethal passion,” as it describes it, rather than his psychology. He does not come to explain Ferrari, simply to portray him. Crossas Laura, ends up giving heart and vigor to the story in a role that is subtly contrasted with that of her husband.
The weaker half of the film is typically found in the domestic scenes between Enzo and Lina, which seem more like filler than anything else, and in the character of Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel leone), a young driver who aspires to stardom and repeatedly seeks the tutelage of Ferrari. “Fon” occupies the role of deuteragonist in the plot but receives a bland and not very memorable characterization.
The infamous Thousand Miles, an arduous endurance race, provides a spectacular climax to the film. Mann He is perhaps one of the best stylists in seeking realism and immediacy in action scenes. The racing sequences are filmed dizzyingly; There is no element on camera or in the soundtrack that does not portend danger or sound like an alarm. And yet the crashes are surprising: they happen from one second to the next and show the brutality of each accident with an impartial and disturbing detail.
