In recent years, the snapshot biopic has been the antidote to stuffy, overlong portraits of significant people’s lives that have long crowded awards season. Films like Jackie and Lincoln succeeded for how they homed in on one specific moment of a life rather than trying to include every detail from childhood up to their death. These biopics had an energy others did not, and often had higher thematic ambitions than giving a history lesson. But Michael Mann’s Ferrari shows that the snapshot biopic isn’t immune to some of the genre’s old trappings.
The film follows Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) shortly after the death of his son Dino. Bookended by tragedy, Ferrari mostly depicts the time leading up to the fatal 1957 Mille Miglia open-road car race. Enzo argues with his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz), continues an affair with his younger heartthrob Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), and hires ill-fated racecar driver Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone) to get behind the wheel of the new Ferrari 335 S and beat Maserati’s top racers. None of these threads, however, succeed in drawing us in to Enzo as a human being. There’s not a reason to care for him, which can work so long as there’s some sort of feeling toward him, some perception that plays into the film’s arc in some manner. But there isn’t, and thus all the shop talk that makes up the film renders it boring.
It’s not Driver’s fault, but Mann’s and screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin’s. The actor does the job that’s given to him on the page well enough. It’s not a complete transformation, but Driver is convincing and puts his energy where it needs to be for the story that’s being told. It’s just the story itself is coasting in neutral up until the Mille Miglia, when Mann’s flair for heart-pumping action finally revs the film’s engine a bit. The race itself is gorgeously filmed, from close corners with cars passing each other to the beautiful Italian vistas. There’s still too little going on back with Enzo to really turn Ferrari into something truly engaging. But hey, after an hour or so of little to no substance, it doesn’t hurt to have some visual flair, even as it becomes clearer that tragedy is about to strike.
The film’s one true lighting rod, however, is Cruz. Her fierce, fiery take on Laura enlivens every scene she’s in. The character is unpredictable and emotionally justified enough that she aids Ferrari’s lack of narrative weight throughout. It’s not the type of performance that can save an entire film, but it can get you through and improve a bad one.
Mann is of course a competent enough director so as not to make a disaster, but Ferrari can’t just get by on its looks. The film is too devoid of feeling to conjure an emotional reaction. So even for Driver’s physical transformation, some really sharp editing, and its well-filmed big race sequence, there’s a lingering emptiness that the film never shakes. There’s still some gas in the tank for the director of such nail-biting classics as Heat and Collateral, but here’s hoping for a tune-up before starting his next feature.
