Another
Oscar movie that wasn’t really at the top of my list but one that I grabbed a
chance to see when it came back to my local theater (the one I’ve really got my eye on, by the way, is Parasite, which I’m desperately hoping
I’ll have an opportunity to see before the ceremony.) Not 100% up my alley, but
it’s very well-made and features some great performances.
In
the 1960s, Henry Ford II is looking to reinvent Ford’s image, and at the
suggestion of one of his marketing guys, undertakes a mission to build a Ford
racing car that will be able to go toe-to-toe with Ferrari at the 24-hour race
at Le Mans. He enlists the help of Carroll Shelby, a former champion racer who
has moved onto selling cars after being forced out of the sport by a heart
condition. Shelby in turn recruits Ken Miles, a hotheaded racer who gets along
better with cars than people. The two of them work together to make Ford’s
dreams come true… if only the Ford suits will get out of their way.
As
evidenced by the summary, this movie isn’t really about “Ford vs. Ferrari.”
That’s the plot, perhaps, the
narrative event that kicks off the action, but the story is instead “Ford vs. The Guys They Hire to Help Them Beat
Ferrari.” Anyone at Ferrari has a relatively small role in the film, including
Enzo Ferrari himself, leaving space for the Ford folks to be positioned more as
the antagonists of the piece. If Shelby and Miles are the mavericks with the
blue-sky ideas and the old-fashioned American determination and grit
(metaphorically American – Miles is British) to create a revolutionary new car,
Ford and co. are the face of corporate America that cares more about profit
than innovation, sacrificing ingenuity for committee-approved stuffed shirts.
This
is a more interesting premise than I was aware of going into the film, so I
appreciate that, and the movie also does a good job at making me temporarily
care about the things that racecar fanatics care about. It drops in the car
info we need to know that will be narratively important without bogging us down
with it, and it dramatizes the events of building/testing the car and, of
course, going to the big race in a way that maintains the drama for non-racing
fans. I especially like Miles’s devotion to cars – his eagle-eyed focus of the
track, the way he talks to and encourages the car while he races, and his
eternal pursuit of the “perfect lap.”
Good
pedigree in the cast, led by Matt Damon as Shelby and Christian Bale as Miles.
Damon’s role is a little more thankless, since he’s positioned more as the
reasonable everyman caught between the overly-corporate Ford types and the
“difficult genius” Miles. As such, he doesn’t get as much flash, but he’s still
very good and brings a nice tone to his interactions with the rest of the cast,
including Tracy Letts as Ford, Jon Bernthal, and Josh Lucas. But naturally,
it’s his interactions with Bale where he really shines. It’s been a few years
since I was really all-in on Christian Bale, so I sometimes get a little
complacent on how good he is. Miles really sparks in his hands, and he’s at
once a brilliant mechanic, an adrenaline-junkie driver, a racecar artiste, a
distracted but devoted father, and a terrible self-promoter. Excellent
performance there.
I
wouldn’t say the film wowed me in any big way, but it’s a solid mid-century period
piece that didn’t go in all the directions I thought it would. As far as the
Oscars go, it’s up for four awards: Edting, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing… and
Best Picture. That’s odd to me, that a film could be one of the best movies of
the year without being acknowledged as having any of the besting acting,
screenplay, or direction. Maybe it speaks more to the demographics of the
average Oscar voter, a nice safe bet that gets the job done with a hat-tip to
nostalgia.
Warnings
Violence,
intensity/peril (not exactly violence, but definitely men putting their lives
in danger by driving cars at 200 miles an hour,) language, and
drinking/smoking.
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