"Ferrari" Review: A Thrilling, Messy Examination of the Auto Racing Giant

Michael Mann's "biopic" has its flaws, but it's a perfect example of how to seize the moment.

January 8, 2024

Biopics are tricky. By definition, they invite often fatal flaws. Tackling someone’s life, or even a sliver, takes time; if mismanaged, time is the death of quality.

It also means exploring the subject’s psyche, examining how events in one phase of life impact those in another. We must leave understanding the movie's philosophical ambitions and reflect on how to alter our perceptions of someone we thought we understood, or in some cases, perceive those of whom we were ignorant in a light different to the one cast by an adoring public.

We can barely accomplish knowledge and understanding with people we regularly interact with; a movie about a public figure has enough baggage to fill a 747. If the checked luggage fee is our time sitting in a theater, biopics accrue the highest fees of any genre.

Thus, Ferrari is a fascinating film to examine. It’s about a man about his marriage about his car company about auto racing about his dead son about his mistress about their son about a young driver about a big race. For much of its 130 minutes, it feels more like a Wikipedia article than a movie, one where you keep skipping to different sections depending on what’s captured your interest.

It’s an endless stream of dramatized fact, usually decontextualized. After all, one watching could get tricked into thinking Enzo Ferrari, founder of the Auto Racing titan, was a decent man navigating difficult circumstances as best he could. Lina Lardi, his mistress, met him during WWII, when emotions ran high and deep, and no one knew if they’d see home again. It’s not his fault; love is love, and he’s simply making the best he can of the done deeds, masking his double life from his wife, Laura, always passing off his deceptions as a means to protect her from needless pain.

Of course, anyone who knows anything knows this is a crock. Enzo Ferrari was a notorious womanizer who believed that “every man should have two wives” and that men don’t really love women; they only “desire them.” Considering he stuffed his exhaust pipe into every woman who walked, we can accurately speculate as to what “desire” meant.

This unwillingness to confront the reality of its subject renders Ferrari, and most biopics, limp, a show of great visual flair and technical heft with nothing to say. It earns respect for not completely sterilizing Enzo, but it sanitizes him more than he deserves. Movies don’t all need deeper messages, but any movie that tells us to sit down and can it for 2 hours to watch some famous guy better give us a good reason for complying. Ferrari does not, even with Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz (as wife Laura) giving their all.

So why, or how, is Ferrari a good movie? It’s simple.

Are the driving scenes well done?

Yes, they’re brisk and pulsating while still reflecting the bare-bones nature of the sport compared to what we see today. Besides, if executed well, no sport is better on-screen than Auto Racing. The danger feels inherent but not probable, a masterful feat considering so much hinges on that idea, and someone bites it in the first 20 minutes.

Is it beautiful to behold?

Yes, the mountain views of the Mille Miglia, the now-infamous race whose final edition, depicted in the film, is etched into the annals of sports history, enrapture the eye and create a sense of claustrophobia that spills out onto the course.

Does it comprehend the small details so as to characterize the man beyond the thinnest ideas, even if it shies away from the full breadth of his iniquity?

Yes, evidenced by his delivering a different speech to each of his drivers, tailor-made for each, exposing their deepest insecurities and needling them on their most pressing desires, all to inspire the lust for greatness and victory.

But Ferrari is good because experiences are highly variable both during their time and retrospectively. Sometimes, things build up gradually, like minor incidents reflecting the same idea culminating in a larger issue. Other times, something can seem inoffensive only to unleash a sudden explosion of emotion, one powerful enough to shape our entire perception of the event. In layman’s terms, that dinner with your bickering in-laws sucked, but that ribeye was the juiciest steak you’ve ever had, so all the rest is a-okay.

Does it make sense to have one thing mitigated by something entirely unrelated? Perhaps not, but that’s how nuanced the human experience is, whether at an uncomfortable meal or a movie theater.

Sometimes, film criticism’s most immediate use is to help explain things it's designed to undermine. It ordinarily chastises sentiment in favor of “objective” examination, analyzing the individual parts to explain the whole. But in dissecting all the ways Ferrari fails to meet a specific standard, we find why sometimes movies must be taken at face value, accepted for what effect they have instead of what bar they do or do not meet.

Yes, much of its narrative feels aimless, doing the many things it hints at reasonably well when isolated but failing to present a coherent story that feels aimed at a particular idea. Yes, the Italian accents are dreadful, the true nature of its subject muted, and the grand finale partially undermined by how little fanfare the Mille Miglia receives. Even in the context of its director’s work, it feels less stylized, edgy, and individualistic than we’d have appreciated.

Yet, despite all of that, it’s entertaining, even though it lacks the purpose needed to make a genuine, long-lasting impact. The crash scene is one of the most shocking, unnerving scenes in recent movie memory, one that seers into consciousness and locks you into an emotional vice grip. It’s the ribeye steak of the movie, the big moment when everything that felt uneven or unsatisfying before dissolves to leave you with one unforgettable impression of your experience.

It expertly sets the stage for what proves the emotional finale: when Enzo and Laura sit down after the crash. Enzo must confront the circumstances in which it has placed him and Laura the viability of her stake in the business with everything on the line. The two negotiate with stakes high enough that the movie can soar on their back as the reality of Enzo’s philandering finally catches him.

The movie undoes that by ending with a silly scene with young Piero, the child fathered with Lina, visiting Dino’s grave, but it still hits hard enough to earn Ferrari some serious racing stripes.

Is it perfect? No, and it still has many flaws that shouldn’t get ignored because one scene hit with the force of a tidal wave. Still, it’s entertaining enough before its stunning finale to be a good movie.

It’s unlikely biopics will ever get wholly figured out; creators get too wrapped in the subjects to do genuine justice to their stories, but Ferrari shows that sometimes, even if still deeply flawed, a movie can embrace and defy its genre to become something worth watching.