Tom Salinsky

Spoilers are funny things. Sometimes you just guess what’s coming next, which I generally think is bad luck more than anything else. Whenever you’re being told a story, you’re guessing what’s coming next. Anticipation is part of the pleasure, and knowing what’s coming next isn’t necessarily a problem. But if something is supposed to come at you from left-field and on your first viewing, you are able to predict it half an hour out, that doesn’t make for the best viewing experience.

What about stories based on life? Does it harm your enjoyment of Apollo 13 if you know the crew were all safely returned to Earth? Will you refuse to see Napoleon because you know what happens at Waterloo? Anyway. If the phrase “Ferrari 1957” doesn’t stir memories in you, you might prefer to watch this film first, and read this review later, because I had no idea what was coming and in the middle of a crowded cinema, I audibly gasped “Jesus!” But, Michael Mann’s narrowly-focused biopic has problems besides – although a key one is the placement of this historic event.

Early on, Mann does very little hand-holding. About the first twenty minutes of this movie is anonymous people getting on and off trains, leaving one house to go to another, making calls in which one person we don’t know tells another person we don’t know that a third person we don’t know has done something whose significance is uncertain. A few introductory captions are a “new kid” to whom things could be explained would have helped a lot.

Eventually things come into focus, and it becomes clear that Enzo Ferrari is struggling to hold his business together, juggling two families and pinning all of his hopes on winning the famous thousand mile “Mille Miglia” race, the glory of which will regenerate his car manufacturing business. But there’s precious little drama in any of this, and bizarrely having cast passionate, explosive Adam Driver (nominative determinism strikes again!) he’s then encouraged him to greet every turn of events – whether fortuitous, disastrous, bizarre or mundane – with the same dignified glower. It deadens the narrative and is a frankly confounding choice.

Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley feel a little freer – but all of these American actors have been asked to do Chico Marx Italian accents (except Cruz who just sticks with her natural Spanish) which adds an additional layer of absurdity. So after two hours of planning, pontificating, organising and glowering (mainly glowering), it’s race time. And the tired old Hollywood sports movie structure would suggest that this is when Ferrari seizes victory from the jaws of defeat. However, the problem here is that victory is in the hands of his drivers and all Ferrari can do is offer futile advice from the sidelines.

What actually happens – as you very well may know – is that although one of his drivers wins the race, another one has a blow-out at 120 miles an hour and spins off the road into a collection of excited onlookers, in a devastating accident which left eleven people dead, one of them gruesomely bisected. Five of them children. It’s an astonishing moment, and the power of it does galvanise the rest of the film. But if you were hoping to discover the effect that this has on Ferrari – as engineer, as one-time race driver, as family man, as entrepreneur – then you’ll be disappointed because ten minutes later the credits are rolling. Why is this hideous turning point not positioned in the middle of the film, so we can deal with the aftermath properly? (Wikipedia tells me that the court cases rumbled on for years).

Everything is shot with Mann’s customary style and energy, and this did a decent job of teaching me about a bit of history I had no knowledge of. But it’s weighed down by poor choices in the fundamental organisation of the material, and a hugely disappointing turn from the magnificently talented Driver.