Driven By Emotion: Exploring the Grief that Haunts Ferrari
Director Michael Mann tried for years to bring Enzo Ferrari’s story to the screen. Now complete, “Ferrari” goes beyond the racetrack, showing us the soul of an icon plagued by deep regret.
good.film
a year ago
Share
Why should I see Ferrari?
The 50s design and racing is impossibly cool, but Ferrari’s core themes of grief, fidelity and family legacy are the pulsing engine of this finely tuned story.
What is the movie Ferrari about?
Ferrari explores social causes like Family & Community and Sports & Recreation
Not a “car person”? Hey, even if you can barely tell a Mazda from a Maserati, chances are good you could spot a lean, luxurious Ferrari in a crowded carpark. The famed Italian marque has been turning heads and burning rubber since 1940, usually adorned in vivid racing red (or “Rosso Corsa”, to give the shade its official name, and to make this review sound extra glam).
But Ferrari isn’t just the nameplate of Italy’s most famous sportscar, it’s the name of the man who brought them into being. And now, it’s the title of Michael Mann’s biopic exploring the life of Enzo Ferrari - the man who racing fans saw as a God. Wisely, rather than slogging out a childhood-to-the-grave epic, Mann has focused on a single year (1957) that encapsulates the story of the man: his sudden tragedy, his silent grief, and his personal redemption.
What happened to Enzo Ferrari?
It’s fair to say that Enzo Ferrari lived a turbulent life. Born at the very end of the 1800s, he built an empire that saw his cars taste racing championship glory, and elevated the name Ferrari to a mythic status in his homeland. But he also lost his brother and his son at tragically young ages, and fathered another son to his mistress that, for reasons we’ll get into below, he couldn’t recognize as his own.
While plenty of the film’s revvy bits and gravitas is centred around 1957’s iconic Mille Miglia (“Thousand Miles”) road race, which had a particularly tragic outcome, it’s a mistake to label Ferrari as a pure racing movie. Instead, director Mann and writer Troy Kennedy Martin hone in on the personal story of the father, his sons, and their respective mothers.
Underpinning the grief of Enzo (played by Adam Driver) and his distraught wife Laura (Penélope Cruz) is the tension of two imminent catastrophes: the Ferrari company teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, and Laura is on the verge of discovering her husband’s secret family. Here’s our take on how the filmmakers fine-tuned each of these meaty themes under the bonnet of a slick red racing machine.
How does Ferrari explore grief?
From the outset of Ferrari, Michael Mann captures (and contrasts) two things perfectly: the beauty of 1950s Modena, Italy, and the heavy hearts of Enzo Ferrari and his wife Laura. They’re mourning the recent loss of their only son, Dino, who died of muscular dystrophy at just 24. How Dino’s death affects his two parents is one of Ferrari’s core concerns.
Laura is at a loss; embittered and rageful. It’s a real ‘wow’ watching Penélope Cruz channel her hot-blooded passion into her early scenes - anyone quibbling that the actress is Spanish, not Italian, is missing how effectively she’s portraying a mother in deep grief. That emotion is fortified when we see flashbacks to Laura and a younger Dino in their moments of shared joy.
Compare that to Enzo, who buries his grief beneath a stoic shell, and pours himself into his work. It’s not that he’s unfeeling - he deeply loved his son (the real Enzo Ferrari was quoted in the 1960s as saying “the only perfect love in this world is that of a father for his son”). But like a well-oiled piston in one of his racing engines, Ferrari compresses his personal emotion - using the resulting explosive force to drive his engineers to higher standards and greater glory.
On top of that, Enzo’s love and grief for Dino is complicated by the existence of his illegitimate son Piero, who he has secreted away in a countryside villa with the boy’s mother, his mistress Lina. In this way, Enzo is grappling with two losses: the literal death of Dino, and the more metaphorical loss of his fatherhood to Piero. He has a son that’s very much alive, but due to marriage, custom and religion, it’s a relationship that must remain unrecognised.
Why did Enzo Ferrari hide away his second son?
Enzo Ferrari’s reasons for keeping Lina and Piero a secret are layered. There’s the obvious: like most adulterers, he’s not real keen on his wife finding out about his lover. With the Ferrari car company also in deep financial trouble (needing a race win to bring in sales), Enzo’s got a clear need to keep up appearances as a respected business leader. In the heavily Catholic culture of Italy, divorce wasn’t just frowned upon, it was literally against the law until 1970.
In an initial stormy argument - where Cruz runs rings around Adam Driver on screen, just quietly - Michael Mann makes two things clear: Dino was the glue that held Enzo and Laura’s marriage together, and now that it’s fractured, her fury is fuelling her on a quest for the truth. Clearly a shrewd operator, Laura has long suspected (and seemingly, accepted) Enzo’s infidelities. But town rumours and other clues are now pointing her to more.
While Enzo paces trackside, hawkishly stopwatch-ing his cars’ laps or urging his mechanics to shave weight off their latest design, Laura attempts to track down Enzo’s “second family”. It’s a fascinating segment because we’re torn between Laura discovering the truth, at the risk of being ripped further apart. Will the pain of Dino’s death (and the end of her marriage) feel even sharper - even more unjust - if she learns of a second Ferrari heir that’s not her own?
On that note, Enzo’s mistress, Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), is under a different pressure. Piero has spent his first 12 years with her surname, but Lina wants her to son to have the security of his father’s empire, including that famous name - Ferrari. Which would let the cat out of the bag a bit for old Enzo. And the clock is ticking: Piero’s confirmation ceremony is coming up (one of the sacraments of initiation within the Catholic Church). Watching Lina discreetly wrestle with the need to provide a future for her son, and with Enzo’s iron will, is one of the film’s best plot points.
What are critics saying about Ferrari?
“Painting a multifaceted portrait of the racing legend during a particular moment of personal and professional crises, Ferrari hums with steely passion and pain.”
- Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
“Ferrari really is like a ’70s movie. It has that intensity of grip, that layered human fascination, that cathartic honesty about what life is really about.”
- Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“That rarest of films: the complex, complicated biopic. Like his subject, Mann appreciates beauty and power while never forgetting that beauty can wither and power can destroy.”
- Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict
Fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear your take. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
So what’s the takeaway from Ferrari?
Ferrari isn’t the first “car movie” to have deeper things than a redlining turbo going on under the bonnet, and it’s not the first to dip into themes of loss (we even wrote about another one in 2023). Like its namesake autos, though, there’s a special pedigree to Ferrari that makes it worth your time in the driver’s seat.
In the “leading” role, Adam Driver brings gravity to Il Commendatore (while trotting out his House of Gucci Italian accent again) but in our eyes, the film that bears his name belongs just as much to Penélope Cruz. Laura Ferrari is the beating heart of this film; her fiery emotion is what you’ll walk out of the cinema remembering.
If you couldn’t care less about Italian sports cars, it’s tempting to put Ferrari in the “not for me” pile. But we’d argue that the human story is the main draw here, not the squealing tyres and chequered flags. For all the superbly visceral racing sequences - and they’re impressive - it’s Ferrari’s examination of a family’s love and grief that add the octane to this real life story.
Where can I see the movie Ferrari?
Ferrari is now screening in cinemas across Australia.
