Ferrari

I could be looking at my shoe, or maybe at yours.
dir: Michael Mann
2023
Since I’ve gotten to watch and review all of the flicks that were nominated for stuff at the Academy Awards, and the awards themselves have been and gone, now I’m sort-of at the wrap up stage for last year, reviewing the flicks that weren’t nominated for squat, but you can just tell these flicks were sold to their stars by their agents as “you’ll definitely get nominated for this!”
Long way of saying “Oscarbait”. With Director Michael Mann, chronicler of hard men doing difficult stuff without changing their facial expressions. With Adam Driver, who maybe isn’t the biggest chameleon out there, but who definitely delivers intense performances when required.
And what’s it about? Ferrari. Not the car, but the man. Enzo Ferrari.
And what a man. Even wearing pants that he pulls up to his armpits, even in late middle-age, he radiates Italian cool. Sunglasses all the time, night or day, like he’s Marcello Mastroianni, only cooler. He has the poise, the confidence of a man who has faced death behind the wheel of a car going as fast as cars can go at that time, and won.
He’s so self-possessed it’s almost irritating, like, you almost want to do something shocking just to see if he’ll flinch.
After getting up from his lover’s bed, and eventually getting home, his angry wife (Penelope Cruz) fires a bullet from a gun at his head, near his head. He doesn’t flinch.
He’s just too fucking cool to flinch. That doesn’t mean he’s got everything under control, though.
Far from it. His company, the one that makes cars, teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, presumably because he doesn’t really care so much about the manufacturing and selling of cars aspect of his business. He only cares about the racing part of his business.
There is a track record that his cars have, that he dreads having his competitors break. If they break it, and they do, well, he has to yell at one of his drivers to drive faster, and get the record back.
If the driver dies while trying to break the record again, well, Enzo is not going to cry any tears over him.
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