Eighty years young, filmmaker Michael Mann (“Heat”) shows no signs of slowing down. Meticulous, precise, and muscular in his filmmaking, the American auteur often takes several years between films, but he’s seemingly been moving slightly faster these days. His last feature was eight years ago, “Black Hat,” in 2015, but he also directed key elements of the recent MAX series, “Tokyo Vice,” so he’s still been busy. His latest is a passion project he’s been trying to mount for years, “Ferrari,” about the life of Enzo Ferrari, the Italian founder of the car manufacturer Ferrari. It is based on the 1991 biography “Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine” by motorsport journalist Brock Yates.
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Adam Driver stars as Ferrari, and the film also co-stars Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, and Patrick Dempsey.
It’s not a cradle-to-grave biopic either, but instead, it centers on a period of turning point crisis in 1957.
Here’s the official Venice synopsis:
It is the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle of Formula 1, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their volatile marriage is battered by the loss of their son, Dino. Ferrari struggles to acknowledge another with Lina Lardi. Meanwhile, his drivers’ passion to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia.
Here’s Michael Mann’s director’s statement from Venice.
Well before I shot Ferrari, I was able to walk through Enzo’s rooms, see his diaries, learn his habits, wonder at the wallpaper in Laura’s bedroom where she spent the last years of her life, quiz their doctor, meet Lina’s niece, understand her manner and modernity, sit in Enzo’s barbershop chair, walk the sidewalks and inhabit his neighborhood, where I also lived, explore the gleaming mechanicals inside a Lampredi V12 engine and the sculpture of 50’s racecars and, most importantly, engage with Enzo’s son, Piero, from whom I learned and absorbed so much, I’ve tried to make come alive passions and allure, Enzo’s strafing wit, the devastation of losing a child, operatic tirades, emotional sanctuary, tragedy, a monumental wager on one race and a struggle to survive, all of which collided in four months of 1957.
“Ferrari” makes its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this week (read our Venice preview piece on the most exciting titles) and makes its theatrical debut in U.S. theaters starting Christmas Day via Neon. Watch the energetic new trailer below.