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Michael Mann’s upcoming high-octane sports feature Ferrari has been two decades in the making and speaking at Deadline’s Contenders London event on Saturday, the director admitted there were times he thought his passion project about the life of Enzo Ferrari would never take off.
“There were numerous times when I thought this was an impossible film to make,” said Mann. “And then I would go back and reread the screenplay and what was magical and riveting about it would present itself all over again and I constantly stayed completely committed to it.”
The film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August, follows the life of Enzo Ferrari. It’s set in 1957, when the marriage of Enzo (Adam Driver) and Laura (Penelope Cruz) has begun to fracture as a result of his philandering and the tragic recent death of their young son. Their unsettled domestic world is on a collision course with his work life as Enzo faces a pair of major turning points: financial pressure to increase productivity, which means going against his long-standing desire to only produce race cars, and preparation for the treacherous cross-country open-road Mille Miglia race.
The film, said Mann, “resonates with the way our lives are.”
“Our lives don’t resolve,” he said. “We don’t have dualities and then there’s a typical drama that resolves in the end. [In life] there usually isn’t resolution. Usually we live with states of contradiction or sometimes two things that are oppositional or just true as it is with the people in this film.”
Mann spoke about how he had developed a friendship with Piero Ferrari, the second and only living son of Enzo Ferrari, who gave the director “a tremendous amount of trust” to tell the story. “It’s very personal to him obviously,” said Mann.
Speaking about working with Driver and Cruz, Mann said: “Penelope was very much understanding the deep, deep belief system that Laura had. Her convictions are very, very strong…she’s locked in a prison of mourning.”
When pressed about if he would confirm that Driver would be cast in his upcoming sequel to crime classic Heat, Mann said: “Adam and I got along like a house on fire. We have the same work ethic – it was pretty intense and we had a great time working together artistically.”
Mann was joined on the panel by the film’s production designer Maria Djurkovic and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt.
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