Ford v. Ferrari

“Ford v. Ferrari lightly challenges the ‘60s-era cliche of male infallibility.”

Title: Ford v. Ferrari (2019)
Director: James Mangold 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Jez Butterworth 👨🏼🇬🇧, John-Henry Butterworth 👨🏼🇬🇧, and Jason Keller 👨🏼🇺🇸

Review by Robert Daniels 👨🏾🇺🇸

—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 5/5

By 1965 standards, the once-dominant Ford seems rather dated: It’s an old man’s car, at least to the young boomers populating the swinging ‘60s. They fancy fast vehicles to match their vitality, cars like Ferrari. Consequently, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts)—grandson of the company’s namesake—wants desperately to forge a new legacy free from his pre-World War II forefathers.

To these ends, Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) offers Ford a vision: to beat Ferrari at the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans, a French auto race that the Italian car company has dominated for six straight years. Ford enlists the help of noted race-car designer and retired driver Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to create a car capable of triumphing. But as Shelby explains to Iococca, “You can’t buy a race.” They need a driver, someone with the will to survive the grueling competition. He recommends the irritable Englishman Ken Miles (Christian Bale). The two, Damon and Bale, combine to make a buddy film that espouses unflinching independence.

In fact, the pursuit of freedom becomes Ford v. Ferrari’s central conflict. Director James Mangold suggests that the real enemy is neither the track nor Ferrari, but the corporate power structure in Ford itself that values a conservative team approach over a singular vision—frustrating Shelby and Miles as they attempt to build the perfect car.

Mangold, too, strives for perfection but through crafted reenactments. In staging famous races like the 1966 24 Hours of Daytona and the aforementioned 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, Mangold’s team employed zero CGI. Instead, they scouted locations that matched the respective tracks in appearance. They also used special rigs and mounts to capture the smooth movements of these classic vehicles. One shot literally glides inches off the pavement, catching a custom-built Ford GT40 weaving in and around a practice track, not unlike a figure skater performing a free-skate program.

Additionally, nostalgia for the 1960s hums over the horizon through Phedon Papamichael’s rich cinematography. Offering a shallow depth of field during night shots, headlights of cars flicker out of focus in the background like starlight in the rain. Even though Mangold does manipulate the events of the classic Le Mans race, accumulated efforts still bring these 1966 competitions to life for a 21st century audience.

Gender: 2.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

Over the course of Ford v. Ferrari’s 152-minute runtime, Mollie Miles (Caitriona Balfe)—Ken’s wife—is the only major female character. Strong-willed and supportive of her husband’s racing ambitions, she warns him against quitting the sport after the IRS repossesses their auto shop due to back taxes. At nearly 40, he’s done chasing a career on the track and would rather find a steady gig to support their family. That is, until the evening Shelby approaches him with the opportunity to work for Ford.

On that night, while Mollie watches from the window of their home, Miles sneaks away to test drive the new prototype from the automaker at a secluded airport. The next day, while driving to a picnic, Mollie assumes control in her lone significant scene. She confronts him about his subterfuge the previous night by violently steering their car onto open traffic in an aggressive bid to make him tell the truth. Stuck in the passenger seat of their station wagon like a cowboy without a horse, Miles hastily admits that he’s returning to racing. Only then does Mollie execute a sharp but docile turn and agrees to stand by him. Within Mangold’s historical drama, Mollie only exists as either the emotionally unstable wife or the perfect support system. And from that point on, Ford v. Ferrari is exclusively a man’s story—though a slightly subversive one.

In fact, Mangold’s picture lightly challenges the era’s popular cliche of male infallibility. During the 1950s and into the ‘60s, men were expected to build emotional walls as a misguided sign of strength. The period’s predominant conception of the father figure exists in television series like the Father Knows Best (1954-60), Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963), and The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68), where dads reign as omnipotent figures. They rarely express affection, only stern disapproval before providing critical lessons to their wayward children.

Similarly, Miles’ relationship with his son Peter (Noah Jupe), who considers his father God-like, takes the same delineation. Miles teaches his son to reach for perfection, not unlike the racing machine he and Shelby are building. But importantly, Miles ultimately diverges from those TV tropes.

His separation comes when his hand is forced by Ford’s racing director, Leo Beebee (Josh Lucas), who’d rather the fiery driver not be the face of the company. Later, during the film’s climax at Le Mans, Beebee orders Miles to slow down: controversially, to allow another Ford driver to place first on the podium. Miles chooses to be the bigger man (and better teammate) and relents. Mangold manipulates this ending, as little historical evidence suggests that Beebee requested Miles to finish second. Nevertheless, through this act, Miles teaches his son to allow emotion to mix with performance—even at the cost of flawlessness.

Moreover, through imperfect men like Shelby, Miles, and Henry Ford II, Mangold crafts a picture that further deconstructs toxic masculinity through the depiction of repressed men who experience catharsis. While Letts as Ford can offer a thousand judgments in a single stoic glance, his best scene arrives when Shelby takes him for a spin in the new GT. The two turn and swerve at such rates that by ride’s end, the auto titan’s impenetrable exterior dissolves into tears as he wishes his father were here to witness the company’s accomplishment. Only in the hyper-masculine environment of an automobile does the man surrender to his internal feelings.

Shelby, just like Ford, can only find the emotional safety to cry in the space of a car. This comes to the forefront when Shelby decides to visit Miles’ family a few weeks after the racer’s death from a crash in 1966. There, he finds Peter riding his bike. During this interaction with Miles’ son, the car designer tries to contain his grief—censoring his emotions, like television dads of the 1950s would do. It’s not until Peter leaves that Shelby jumps into his car and dissolves: a reaction fueled by a close male friendship predicated upon creating the perfect racing machine. The poignant and cathartic scene is only interrupted when the mourning Shelby revs his engine, locked back into the masculine rumble that metaphorically tells him to cease his tears.

Race: 1/5

Unfortunately, despite the fudging of historical events, Ford vs. Ferrari sides with accuracy with respect to racial diversity. Auto racing, at its core, is a Southern good ol’ boy past time—once steeped in the ugly history of Jim Crow laws. Up until now, only eight African Americans have raced in NASCAR. Wendell Scott, the first Black man to break NASCAR’s color barrier, began racing in 1961. But for much of his career, he remained the only one.

In fact, when Scott won his lone race in 1963, officials informed a white driver he finished first instead. Theories abound, naturally, but many believe the decision was prompted by fears of a Black man accepting a trophy from white pageant queen.

There are no people of color in Mangold’s drama. And sure, racing wasn’t open to people of color during the period. But considering how Mangold changed historical details to create a sense of suspense, some color-blind casting shouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibility.

Mediaversity Grade: C- 2.83/5

Mangold’s Ford v. Ferrari offers impressive race sequences and thrives in a reverence for the past: when men were men (complete with vanity projects) and auto racing occupied a central cultural importance. But in its fervent re-creation of the period, Mangold misses several opportunities to expand the role of the film’s lone woman, Mollie Miles, even while it does deconstruct the fairy tale of masculine perfectionism relative to the period.

Moreover, Mangold disappointingly picks and chooses where to stay faithful to history, fiddling with real-life events like the race at Le Mans but refraining from color-blind casting, even though films that mirror modern demographics draw more foot traffic at the box office. While Ford v. Ferrari finishes first on a technical level, it serves as a myopic altar to a sport and era of white-male dominance.

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Grade: CLiNovember 23, 2019Great for: Technical