DAMON, BALE IN TOP GEAR
‘Ford v Ferrari’ is no masterpiece, but it is real cinema
Quick: Who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966?
If you know the answer without Googling, then I probably don’t have to sell you on
Ford v Ferrari, James Mangold’s nimble and crafty reconstruction of a storied moment in the annals of auto racing. You will probably go in prepared to spot torque differentials and historical discrepancies that escaped my notice. If, on the other hand, you are (like me) a bit of a motorsport ignoramus, then you might want to stay away from web-search spoilers and let the film surprise you.
It is, all in all, a pleasant surprise. Partly because Christian Bale and Matt Damon, the lead actors, are really good, and are supported by a fine cast that includes Tracy Letts in one of the best and least-expected crying scenes of the year. And partly because the car stuff — in the garage and on the track — is crisply filmed and edited, offering a reminder that movies and automobiles have a natural affinity and a lot of shared history.
But Ford v Ferrari, written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller, pushes the connection further, suggesting subtle but unmistakable links between racing and filmmaking as aesthetic and economic propositions. Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles, the car designer and driver played by Damon and Bale, are risk-hungry free spirits gambling with someone else’s money, unruly individualists who nonetheless depend on the good will of a large corporation.
RACE FOR SUPREMACY
The conflict alluded to in the title — between the assembly lines of Detroit and the artisanal workshops of Modena, Italy, for supremacy in the racing world — is a bit of a red herring. The real
struggle is between the managers and bureaucrats of the Ford Motor Co and the mavericks whose work rolls out onto the track bearing the Ford logo. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine Shelby and Miles as filmmakers fighting with studio suits for creative control.
They are, in any case, cool guys of a particular vintage, avatars of a salty, clean-cut, old-style masculinity that is enjoying a somewhat improbable vogue these days. Their effort to build a Le Mans-winning race car for Ford is an engineering challenge similar in ambition to the Apollo programme commemorated in Damien Chazelle’s
First Man, though smaller in scale. The chalk-and-cheese friendship between Shelby, a solid, unflappable Texan, and Miles, a spidery, easily flapped Cockney, might remind you of the bond between Brad Pitt’s and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters in
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.
The film embraces a view of the ’60s in which the square American mainstream is where the action is.
Shelby, a former Le Mans champion who gave up competitive driving for health reasons, knows Miles, who runs a struggling repair shop in Los Angeles, from the American racing circuit.
The two of them take up a commission bestowed by Henry Ford II (the wonderful Letts). His family business is threatened by the doughtiness of its products, which restless young baby boomers don’t want to buy. Beating Ferrari at Le Mans will be part of a rebranding strategy that also includes the introduction of the sporty Mustang.
Ford v Ferrari is no masterpiece, but it is — to invoke a currently simmering debate — real cinema, the kind of solid, satisfying, nonpandering movie that can seem endangered nowadays. To put it in the simplest terms: You may not think you care who won at Le Mans in 1966, but for 2 1/2 hours, you will.