NATIONAL CAR FETISH KICKS UP FETISH MOVIE BOX OFFICE

Christian Bale (left) and Matt Damon in typical buddy conflict in 'Ford v Ferrari'

By Dominique Paul Noth

America’s love for speedy cars and Detroit brand dominance have made a cinematic box office victor out of Ford v Ferrari, which takes Hollywood liberties with a famous 1960s rivalry but also has  some legitimate Oscar nominations (not for best picture which is a joke but  for editing and sound categories).

Its big name lead actors, Matt Damon and Christian Bale, were ignored by Oscar but not by moviegoers who have made the film a big draw since November.

Slickly directed by James Mangold, it forces an immediate confession from me.  I am familiar with but  not a fan of sportscar racing movies, which makes me un-American in some circles.  I think our fetish with automobile speed – and even with the interstate highway system, for which I was grateful on a recent trip to Florida and is responsible for a legion of truck and car improvements that have enhanced my living standards and certainly my diet -- is now standing in the way of limiting fossil fuels.

Maybe over decades electric cars will take over these expansive highways and steel and concrete trade routes that have knit the country together. But our continued fascination with the automobile, its oily smells, roars and shifting gears pumping up fueling technology, have pushed the average Joe behind the wheel to try and break the sound barrier and have made potshots on Ford, Chevy and import brands commonplace. You could also argue that all this car mechanics focus is getting in the way of where progress should be taking us.

That said, race car movies have been a Hollywood staple since James Cagney and Clark Gable and was certainly formidable for James Garner and Steve McQueen in the same 1960s decade where this film takes place.

For those who don’t think like me and even for those who do, the movie is a technological Le Mans triumph, a buddy story of how racing car designer Carroll Shelby and beatnik British driver Ken Miles – Damon and Bale respectively, the first with a heavy Southern actor, the second mastering the brash Brummie intonations and sardonic wry smile of a  Birmingham rascal – joined together in individuality to force Henry Ford II off his placid rump (a glaringly pompous performance by Tracy Letts) and think outside his Brooks Brothers corporate juggernaut devoted to mass production.

Stung by a Ferrari trade deal that ran rings around him, Ford vows to beat the Italian engineering monarch on the international racetrack, which in the film requires undoing the entire CEO executive structure Ford has built and accept the scruffy mavericks and their team of builders. 

The film makes a big deal about how different the assembly line  car industry is from what is needed on the race circuit. In fact, the Ford corporate structure is the big villain in the story.  In my mind, Bale’s jaunty attitude as the much hated Detroit  intruder raises the film out of the B movie class.

The movie shows all sides playing gamesmanship diving in and out of the racing pits.  It makes a too big deal about the poetry and independence of high speed racing, but drives the point home when Letts if forced to endure a high speed ride in his own creation (another fictional concoction).

In race after race leading to crash after crash, it also plays with reality as drivers seem to have time at outrageous speeds to  glare at each other and yell insults in between gear shifts. Even racing novices will know how the film is playing stop and go games with the realities of the track,  whipping up our involvement with invented moments of conflict and trickery.

Off-centering the driving excess are the intervals of Bale as a warm and impish parent and spouse, blessed by the loving and defiant looks and style of Caitriona Balfe as his wife. Many of the events, such as a comic knockdown fight between Damon and Bale, are totally fabricated, just as the movie makes mythic the final events, wrapping a neat emotional bow around the proceedings.

In those moments the film is pure Hollywood and mawkish, but Bale’s performance and its technical atmosphere  surpass the race car movies of the past. 

Other recent film reviews with Oscar nominations added:

JoJo Rabbit 
Oscar nominated as best picture, supporting actress (Scarlet Johansson), adapted screenplay, production design, film editing and costume design.

Little Women
Oscar nominated as best picture, best actress (Saoirse Ronan), best supporting actress (Florence Pugh), adapted screenplay, costume design, music.

1917 
Oscar nominated as best picture, director, original screenplay, production design, sound mixing, sound editing, cinematography. music.

Dark Waters, The Report and Just Mercy.  (The last treated as a 2020 release.)

The Two Popes
Oscar nominated as best actor, supporting actor, adapted screenplay.

Joker
Oscar nominated as best picture, actor, director, adapted screenplay, cinematography, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing, music, costume, makeup.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.