BEFORE: Lets stay on the sports theme, because if there's anything I know less about than football, it's probably auto racing. Another sport I used to have to watch and tape - because sometimes there were ads from NASCAR sponsors that didn't air anywhere else. But there's a lot I don't understand about racing - heck, I don't even know how to drive a stick-shift, so I've got a terrible lack of knowledge with driving stuff - so I'm hoping this film explains a lot.
Thanks to today's screener, and the one for "Little Women", I've now seen most of the films that were nominated for Best Picture of 2019, 7 out of 9. I'm just missing "Jojo Rabbit", which seems like a good bet to help me make an important connection between the October Halloween chain and "Black Widow" in early November, so that's the plan there. "Parasite" is nearly impossible to link to, it connects to only one other film on my list, so I may have to wait for an open slot at the first or last day of another year, either 2021 or 2022. Yep, that's where I find myself, if I stick with my system.
Ray McKinnon carries over from "The Blind Side".
THE PLOT: American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.
AFTER: What don't I understand about racing? Really, I think it's the pit stop thing that trips me up more than anything else. I get horse racing and marathons and stuff, because every entrant starts at the same place, and the first one that crosses the finish line is the winner (for the most part, anyway, except for Rosie Ruiz and Maximum Security). But how the heck do they keep track of how many times a car has gone around the track, when it pulls over into the pit so many times, for gas and new tires, or as seen in this film, to change drivers and such? While that car is in the pit, other cars are still going around the track, so how do they tell which one has done the most laps? I've had this explained to me in the past, and I never quite understand it. I get that they probably use computers now, or GPS devices on the new cars that can quite easily count the laps, but what did they do back in the old days? If they relied just on humans to count the laps, even with one person devoted to each car, there's still room for human error. And then when there are two cars out on the track, and one's out in front of the other, it's possible that the one in back has done more laps, so it's really ahead of the car that it's behind. This just makes my head hurt, like thinking about time zone differences during daylight savings time.
Then you've got this Le Mans race, which apparently goes on for 24 hours. So somebody in 1966 was up and counting the laps for each car at 3 a.m., what if that person drifts off for a few minutes in the middle of the night, what happens then? Also, if the race is really 24 hours long, is it a distance race or a timed race? Is the winning car the one that goes the furthest in exactly 24 hours, or is there some kind of limit on the number of laps. Most races are distance races, like a marathon is 26.22 miles, and that's it. Imagine a road race where it was just 4 hours long, no matter what, and whoever could run the farthest in that time would be the winner - that would be really weird, right?
Still, I've just looked it up on Wiki and this seems to be the way this particular race works, whichever car travels the greatest distance in 24 hours is the winner - so it's not just whichever car passes the finish line first, once the time limit is over. Good to know. It's also a delicate balancing act, putting the demands on the car to get maximum speed and efficienty, while still allowing the same car to run for 24 hours without mechanical failure. So greater speed puts more of a strain on the car, but slower speeds will allow that car to function longer, but obviously aren't going to help when it comes to covering more distance. That seems to be entail more strategy than the average car race. Then there's the team of drivers that has to fight fatigue, and stagger their meal and nap break schedules to ensure that someone is always ready to drive. OK, now I'm more interested, because I love logistics and planning and stuff like that. I can figure out how other races count the laps correctly later, let's just focus on this Le Mans thing and move on. But if you think about it, a car that hugs the inside of a track travels significantly less distance over the course of a car race than one that stays on the outside of the track, so how do they account for that?
(I've tried once again to figure this all out with the help of the internet, but honestly, I'm more confused than ever. Some races with the number "500" in their name are 500 miles long, while others are 500 kilometers, and still others are 500 laps around a particular track, which may or may not be one mile long. I trust that somebody, somewhere, is keeping this all straight, I just don't have the time.)
Anyway, the film is about the rivalry between American car company Ford and Italian car company Ferrari. Henry Ford II had some kind of midlife crisis, and threatened to fire all his middle-men and executives unless someone could come up with a great idea to best up-and-coming Chevrolet. One Ford executive, a young Lee Iacocca, came up with the idea to partner with Ferrari and get involved with auto racing, because it's cool, would raise the company's visibility and also attract younger people to buy Fords. The meetings with the Ferrari company in Italy to partner in a racing team, well, they did not go well. So suddenly the rivalry between Ford and Chevy shifted to a rivalry between Ford and Ferrari. Corporate executives are very petty people, it turns out.
The Ford executives brought on Carroll Shelby, a former race-car driver who had won Le Mans in 1959, and was now designing and selling sports cars. The Shelby American company was formed, and Shelby tapped the race driver and hotheaded mechanic Ken Miles to come on board. Taking Shelby's design, and using Miles to test out the car and find the design flaws, the Ford team competed in the 1965 Le Mans, only Ken Miles didn't seem to fit the image that the Ford Company wanted - which apparently was a clean-cut American who didn't drink, smoke, or curse. Yeah, good luck with that. None of the Fords were able to finish the race in 1965, and the film would have us believe that it was all due to the poor choice of driver. I suppose it makes sense, the man who knew the most about driving the car during development is probably the most logical choice to race it. Plus Miles had that unique combination as both a risk-taker and someone striving for perfect efficiency with each lap.
Obviously any racing film is going to rely on certain conventions, just as any film about boxing would when it shows a boxer getting certain advice from his cornerman, or adjusting his fighting style in the middle of the bout, based on the way his opponent is boxing. In "Ford v Ferrari" they rely a few times on Miles drafting behind the car in first place, and then speeding up at just the right moment to pass that car and take the lead, just before the finish line. Also, cutting to Shelby on the sidelines, calling out "Now!" when that moment comes, even though Miles can't hear him - this was back in the day, before they had radio mikes so the racing team captain could communicate with the driver.
I'm obviously a huge "Star Wars" fan, because I couldn't help but notice how much the 1966 Le Mans race has in common with the pod-racing sequence from "The Phantom Menace", especially when the hero character finishes the first lap in last place, and then comes from behind to have a last-minute showdown with his main opponent. Obviously two filmmakers could be drawing from the same playbook where competitions are concerned, and anyway, assuming this film is faithful to true events, that means that the 1966 Le Mans race came first - so perhaps George Lucas was drawing inspiration from a real car race, I'll have to check on that.
I'll try to avoid spoilers here, but I don't think I'm giving away much to say that Miles gets his shot the following year, 1966, at Le Mans. He's one of several drivers on the team, but since he sets lap records for the course during his shifts, the implication is that his driving is the main reason for the result of the race. The winning car/team is a matter of public record so I don't feel the need to mention it here, but it's a thrilling film all the way up to that point, with the design and racing team both overcoming setbacks at every stage of the process.
What seems a little odd here, to me at least, is not showing any footage from the 1965 Le Mans race - instead we listen to it over the radio, while we see Ken Miles doing the same. This feels like it violates the over-arching principle of "Show, don't tell" but viewed another way, he does provide valuable insight when he correctly surmises from the commentator's description of the race that certain drivers are pushing the car too hard in some places, not treating the gearbox right, and this does re-confirm the fact that he should have been chosen in the first place. Plus I'm forced to admit that it would have taken up too much screen time to show the 1965 race, and the film was already running long as is - 2 hours and 32 minutes, which is nearly as long as "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"!
Out of the seven Best Picture nominees from last year that I've seen, if I go just by my own scores to determine which film should have won, I find myself in a three-way tie between this one, "Joker" and "The Irishman". I know I'm very late to the party, but that's where I find myself.
By the way, that guy playing Henry Ford II (grandson of the original Henry Ford) is the same actor who was arguing over publishing royalties with Jo March last week in "Little Women", and he'll be here tomorrow, too. That's Tracy Letts, and I know he's also a playwright, he wrote "August: Osage County" and a new play called "The Minutes" that I saw advertised in the subway before everything shut down.
Also starring Matt Damon (last seen in "The Great Wall"), Christian Bale (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "Widows"), Caitriona Balfe (last seen in "Money Monster"), Josh Lucas (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Noah Jupe (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Tracy Letts (last seen in "Little Women"), Remo Girone (last seen in "Live By Night"), JJ Feild (last seen in "Professor Marston & the Wonder Women"), Jack McCullen, Corrado Invernizzi, Joe Williamson, Ian Harding, Christopher Darga (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw'), Shawn Law, Darrin Prescott, Alex Gurney, Benjamin Rigby (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Ben Collins, Francesco Bauco, Guido Cocomello, Adam Mayfield, Sean Carrigan (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Giles Matthey (last seen in "Jobs"), Rudolf Martin, Wallace Langham (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Brad Beyer (last seen in "42"), Giovanni Cirfiera, Drew Rausch, Luigi Debiasse, Tanner Foust, Arron Shiver, Gian Franco Tordi, Jan Munroe (last seen in "The Grifters"), Brent Pontin.
RATING: 7 out of 10 crash barriers
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