Ferrari revs up tragedy into sickening spectacle – and fails to justify it

Michael Mann’s Enzo Ferrari biopic delves into the darker side of the motoring giant. But, writes Louis Chilton, the film has its own uncomfortable implications. Spoilers follow

Driver by name, driver by nature: Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari in Michael Mann’s new biopic (Neon)

Things aren’t going to end well in Ferrari. We sense this from very early in the film, when Enzo Ferrari’s (Adam Driver) wife and business partner Laura (Penelope Cruz) fires a gun at him, missing his head (deliberately) by a matter of inches. It’s a warning shot – a warning that goes unheeded. Over the next two hours, Michael Mann’s tundra-cold biopic (out now in cinemas) crawls slowly towards tragedy. It should perhaps be noted at this point that this article will delve into what some would call “spoiler territory”. (Seeing as the film is based largely on true events, however, anyone au fait with their motor racing history will know what happens going in.)

Much of Ferrari builds towards the 1957 Mille Miglia, an auto race held along public roads in Italy. The event was pivotal for Ferrari, with the car company’s future seemingly resting on the make-or-break result of the illustrious race. In the film, Driver’s Ferrari speaks about the importance of risk-taking, of putting one’s own life on the line to gain a competitive edge. Towards the end of the Mille Miglia, he is seen flouting safety practices in order to see out the win; eventually, a Ferrari car driven by 28-year-old Alfonso de Portago suffers a burst tyre. The car flips over, and crushes a crowd of onlookers. Nine pedestrians die, including five children. De Portago’s navigator also dies in the crash, while de Portago himself is cut in half. The Mille Miglia is no more.

The horrific accident is recreated for the climax of Mann’s film. It’s a shocking set piece, a sudden and sickening twist – one that the film is unable to fully reckon with. Ferrari suffers from slightly unconvincing special effects; in this and other crash scenes, automobiles are seen flipping and leaping through the air as if made of cardboard. But the moment when the car collides with the victims is nonetheless grimly effective. In a film that largely consists of conversations and mundanity, it’s jarring to see such quick and extreme violence occur. The aftermath, lingered over briefly by Mann’s camera, is the stuff of horror, culminating in a grisly shot of de Portago’s (Gabriel Leone) cadaver, cleaved in two.

It is, per the film’s viewpoint, obvious that Enzo Ferrari has blood on his hands. Yet the aftermath of the accident presents it more as a logistical problem than a moral one. The question is not how Ferrari deals with his guilt, but how his company deals with the scrutiny. The film sits in the awfulness for just a minute, then moves on – and then, the film is over. The callousness is, to an extent, the point. The film is rather hurried in its handling of the tragedy because its protagonist isn’t interested in reckoning with it either. Ferrari is a study of a flawed, deceitful egotist, and seems ultimately uninterested in affirming the actual value of Ferrari’s motoring achievements.

And yet, the Mille Miglia crash really happened. Real people, children, actually died from the accident. It feels distasteful for these deaths to be recreated so viscerally onscreen – particularly in service of a narrative that seems to have no interest in them, beyond their pertinence to the psychology of Enzo Ferrari.

It is to Ferrari’s credit that it resists becoming hagiography. The fact that it is willing to, as it were, go there with the crash scene – to make it as horrible and upsetting as it is – suggests that Mann and screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin were conscious of the gravity of the incident. But this consciousness is not reflected in the rest of the film. If Ferrari is a film about the cost of greatness – or simply the cost of vaulting ambition – then it would do well to have focused a little more on this cost, and less on Ferrari’s far less consequential personal and marital dramas. As it is, we get all this terror, all this dismay, and there’s nowhere for it to go. Ferrari is haunted by these people’s deaths. I’m just not sure it knows it.

‘Ferrari’ is out now in cinemas