Luis Martinez
Updated Wednesday, February 7, 2024-21:31
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Now that we know that Hamilton has taken Sainz's place at Ferrari, there is no forgiveness. Before there wasn't either, but at this very moment less so. '
Ferrari
' is one of those films that aspires to everything for the simple reason that it wants everything. It is the drama of sad rich people, it is the adventure of suicidal people in love with their own death, it is the tragedy of an empty woman, it is passion, it is speed and, above all, it is (or wants to be, better) a metaphor for that which, after accelerating a lot, it breaks definitively. And forever. Otherwise, you close your eyes and without having seen a single frame you already feel the wind on your face.
Too bad the treadmill crashes before taking the first turn.
To begin with, '
Ferrari
' is the film that marks the return of octogenarian Michael Mann to the cinema since he filmed '
Blackhat: Menace on the Internet
' in 2015. It is a project based on the monumental biography signed by Brock Yates and which has occupied the director for more than ten years. In the lead role, Adam Driver (there are obligatory surnames), the American who has done the most for something as exotic and inexplicable as pronouncing English with an Italian accent (we already saw him in 'The House of Gucci').
And next to him, Penélope Cruz, the Italian actress who best plays Raimunda (or the other way around).
To know more
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Editor: LUIS MARTÍNEZ
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Editor: LUIS MARTÍNEZ Venice
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The idea is to offer a ' Shakespearean
' approach
to drama in its starkest and broadest meaning. It talks about power, glory, love and, above all, loss. Everything begins
'in media res'
, as the classics say. That is to say, 10 years have passed since the couple Enzo and Laura founded the company that ended up becoming a myth. Now everything is bankruptcy, recrimination and sadness. The cars don't run as fast as they should,
the memory of the deceased firstborn poisons everything
and the family is not only not what it was, but it simply isn't even. She chews on her loneliness with lonely bitterness and he keeps his other family away from the catastrophe that surrounds him.
Strictly speaking, it is not a biographical film or '
biopic
'. The film stops at a certain year, 1957, in which the family and business life of the old patriarch is, as has already been said, at a decisive point. With the loss of his recent son, the protagonist finds himself in the position of selling his empire to a higher bidder (Fiat) while the other out-of-wedlock son claims his place in the world. Everything is settled in a race (the Mille Miglia) that runs through all of Italy and in which the brand of the
Prancing Horse
and Maserati will face each other, face to face. An era of glory and glamor ends, and the rest begins, which, by definition, is worse.
Well, and to everyone's surprise, Mann abandons any intention of style or narrative.
No trace of the filmmaker who reinvented and vindicated digital technology
as an expressive element at the level of celluloid in films like
'Public Enemies'
; not a single contribution of a more or less novel nature from the author who best portrayed the night in films like '
The Dilemma
' or '
Collateral
'; none of the taste for the feverish montage that we saw in 'Heat'...
Let's say that the director simply lets himself go and in his majestic shipwreck (there is no denying that: set to crash, let it be with a crash), only Penélope Cruz remains firm. Once again, the actress closest to Anna Magnani that cinema has given after Anna Magnani once again demonstrates her clarity in suffering, her transparency when it comes to breaking,
her excessive power to place the viewer at the mercy of side of each the tears of her.
Suddenly, the film always revolves around her: when she is in shot because she is there and when she is not because she is missed.
In truth, this same film by any other director would have encouraged a rather condescending reading. Everything seems so tight that it could be said to be the perfect work of a not necessarily very dedicated student of Michael Mann himself. The problem is that it is precisely the colossus Mann who signs. And he signs a project in which he has been immersed for more than a decade.
Neither the narrative apathy nor the absolute lack of fiber and grit in each and every one of the skids is understood.
Which are many. And then there's the Sainz thing, for God's sake.
—
Director:
Michael Mann
Cast:
Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Patrick Dempsey, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O'Connell
Nationality:
United States
Duration:
130 min.