Ford v Ferrari (2019) has a scene at an auto show that encompasses the themes of the films and the motivations of its characters beautifully. Plus, THAT ‘STANG.
Late Watch is a series where we finally get around to watching a buzzy or awards-season movie.
Christian Bale’s Ken Miles has brought his son to the show at the urging of Matt Damon’s Carroll Shelby. Shelby has been hired by Ford Motor Company to head the racing program, and Shelby wants Miles to join him. Shelby’s task, more specifically, is to beat Enzo Ferrari’s race team at Le Mans. Ferrari used Henry Ford II’s purchase offer as a means to leverage more money from Fiat, and then Ferrari insulted Ford II and his company repeatedly (in one of the many fun and funny scenes of the film; Jon Bernthal’s Lee Iacocca relaying the insults to Tracy Letts’ Ford II is another of these great scenes). Shelby and Miles chafe at the corporate structure of Ford, and especially its arsenal of yes men.
Anyway, that’s all for the rest of this essay. Because what I wanted to talk about first was the car at this car show. Because I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen anything filmed so beautifully. I hate the act of driving, but I’m all in on the allure of the internal combustion engine and the automobile. This Mustang, though… wow. I felt like I’d just awoken a fetish, this thing was so incredible.
When Josh Lucas’ Leo Beebe chastises Miles’ kid for touching the car, I was right there with him. That thing is flawless, little bud. Don’t put your YooHoo-drinking hands on that finish!
Phedon Papamichael’s camerawork is amazing. The cars look incredible, the magic-hour lighting looks great on the actors and the cars and the landscapes. The Shelby garage, situated at an active airport, looks like the coolest place on planet earth. Everything about this movie is movie-star prestige and charm. James Mangold, who has previously directed the very good films Logan, Cop Land, and 3:10 to Yuma (and is helming the forthcoming and hopefully alien-free Indiana Jones 5), has made his best film.
I try to have realistic expectations for the world (* obviously we’re in the post-future. I’m talking about the before-time. The long-long-ago.). Superhero movies and the Disneyfication of intellectual property is the reality. Tentpole franchises suck all the oxygen (and funding) out of the room. Somewhere below them in budget priority are the historical reenactments and the biographies of tortured artists and/or tortured journalists and everything else that plays on the small screens at the theater. You know the screens I mean: the screens where you miss half the dialogue because Iron Man 2 at the showing next door just rattled the walls with another AC/DC song. These mid- to high-budget spectacle movies (or “dad movies” to be reductive) don’t get made much any more. It’s a bummer.
Caitriona Balfe plays Mollie Miles, and I was unfamilar with her work before this film (Outlander is her breakout, if I am not mistaken). She’s great. Her performance is very interesting, because I could see it skewing toward being one-note in the hands of a lesser actor or in decades past. Instead, we see why she and Ken Miles got married. And we see her being supportive of Miles (let’s be clear: she shocks him into being honest) in a very memorable scene involving speeds no station wagon should endure. I was confused about why she and their child Peter were watching the Le Mans races on the TV instead of being present at the track, but maybe that’s a bit of historical verisimilitude. It gives their connection to the race a more personal touch than if we’d cut to reaction shots of them jammed into the stands with the other spectators at the racetrack. But still, of what I felt was a well-constructed movie, I kept wondering why she and the boy weren’t at the race. Oh well.
Kinda talked about the actors enough, but we’ll round them out here. Tracey Letts, the playwright and sometime actor, is pretty good as Henry Ford II. He effortlessly gives off the vibe of a rich kid who chafes at living up to towering ancestors. He is proud and prickly, which makes his reaction to Shelby’s gamble all the more unexpected when it happens. I don’t want to spoil much, but I’ll just say Ford’s reaction is memorable in that scene (you’ll know the one when you see it). Jon Bernthal is great in this movie, and I maintain that The Punisher was just bad revenge fantasy with any other actor in the lead role. I find him to be a treat any time I see him on screen. Bale is pretty good in the movie. I liked him in the role and I think it is a testament to his work that Miles comes across as hotheaded because he is passionate, not because he’s a jagoff (we see the difference in how he treats his wife, child, and racecars versus how he handles Beebe and the other Ford company stooges). Damon is the standout to me, though. His scene in Ford II’s office is tremendous. And Shelby’s envy is palpable in the race scenes. He wants to be out there; he’s more than good enough to be out there; his body can’t take it. Damon, an actor I can take or leave most of the time, is great here.
Back to the cars.
What I’d like to focus on in subsequent viewings is the sound design. I remember hearing some engines (lol) and it sounded like what I’d expect out of such massive engines, and it wasn’t like the misplaced engine sounds in Ronin, for instance, when you hear way too much gear shifting and the engine noise isn’t matching up to the size of the cars.
I mention the sound design because the race scenes are so visually affecting that I might not have noticed if Imagine Dragons or Creed was being played over them instead of engine sounds and orchestral score. The speed of the cars, how close they are to each other, the tiny windows of time in which people make their move, and the amount of precision needed to take the turns at these speeds… this movie pulls you in during those races.
OK, one last acting note. Ray McKinnon plays Shelby’s right-hand man and chief engineer. You may know him from who knows what, but to me he is always the tragic Reverend Smith from Deadwood. His story arc in that show haunts me to this day. He doesn’t have near as much to work with in Ford v Ferrari, but I wanted to point him out because he rules.
Ford v Ferrari was nominated for Best Picture, Film Editing, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing, and won Film Editing and Sound Editing at the 92nd Academy Awards. Kind of a weird year for the awards, as it was a year full of releases from auteurs (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Parasite, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, Jojo Rabbit, Richard Jewell, etc.). Tough competition compared to most years.
I look forward to seeing it again, if only to get another glimpse of that Mustang. Me-ow.