This article contains spoilers for Maestro, Napoleon and A Star is Born
Last month, in an interview between Michael Mann and Alejandro G. Iñárritu in Los Angeles, Iñárritu praised his fellow director on the unexpected emotional tenderness of his latest film Ferrari saying: “For me, [the movie] is about a character and what he has lost.”
“We are what we have lost in our lives. That defines us much more than what we have.”
Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari in Ferrari.Credit: AP
Iñárritu was referring to a quiet moment in the film where Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is pushing a car in silence, grief-stricken after the recent death of his son, Dino.
I thought about this in relation to the women depicted in the latest big biopics: Oppenheimer, Napoleon, Maestro, and Ferrari – and the losses they suffered by being in the orbit of ‘male greatness’.
These films about ‘great historical men’, directed by the great male directors of our generation (Oppenheimer by Chris Nolan, Napoleon by Ridley Scott, Maestro by Bradley Cooper, and Ferrari by Michael Mann) extol the larger-than-life braggadocio of the mid-century masculine ideal.
It goes without saying these films are all about men — men building things, men going to war, men writing music — men exercising power. But it’s not just men in general they celebrate; each film celebrates a singular man.
The man who built the atomic bomb. The man who founded Ferrari. The man who wanted to take over Europe. The man who single-handedly ushered classical music into modernity in the 20th century.
Cinema’s great wives club: the role of women in the male biopic
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02.01.2024
This article contains spoilers for Maestro, Napoleon and A Star is Born
Last month, in an interview between Michael Mann and Alejandro G. Iñárritu in Los Angeles, Iñárritu praised his fellow director on the unexpected emotional tenderness of his latest film Ferrari saying: “For me, [the movie] is about a character and what he has lost.”
“We are what we have lost in our........
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