A still from Ford v. Ferrari (2019)Twentieth Century Fox Ford v Ferrari, which opened Friday, November 15 starring Christian Bale and Matt Damon, follows British racing driver Ken Miles (Bale), and hot-rodder Carroll Shelby (Damon) as they build a special race car to help the Ford Motor Company beat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966 and 1967.The goal was to break Enzo Ferraris stronghold on international racing that had his Scuderia Ferrari winning everything throughout the 1960s.They strike an odd-couple pair: Miles is a wiry, eccentric Brit; Shelby is a square-jawed, cowboy-hat-wearing Texan. Neither much like the corporate pressure exerted by Ford chief Lee Iacocca and his marketing goons, who themselves were humiliated by Ferraris Old World gravitas after a bungled buyout attempt. And there you have the necessary tension for a movie.Its a beautifully shot film that will be enjoyable for modern car buyers and enthusiasts alike engines rev, tires squeal, stopwatches click. But what I saw is a devastating picture of the lack of diversity that permeated the industry in the 1960s.If automakers want any hope of relevance in the next decades, as they face the most radical changes and challenges theyve experienced in 150-odd years of automotive history, they would be wise to contemplate it closely. Because Ford v Ferrari shows a generation best left dead and gone. Matt Damon and Christian Bale on the set of Twentieth Century Fox’s ‘Ford v Ferrari’ Twentieth Century Fox It’s a Man’s WorldPicture this: During all 152 minutes of the film which, for those who love vintage racing cars, will feel as good as an ice cream sundae on a summer afternoon men dominate the screen for 98 per cent of the time, by my unofficial count. They are in the executive suites at Ford and Ferrari, in the workshops and garages in Venice, on the track out at Willow Springs Raceway. (And when I say men, I mean white, straight men.)No fraction of the storyline is devoted to parsing the thoughts and feelings of any female who appears, even peripherally, on screen. Instead, Caitriona Balfe, who plays Miless wife, Mollie, is presented as the doting mother: She smiles mildly and nods her head indulgently as her husband struggles to gain traction in the race world. She clucks and scolds like a schoolmarm when Miles and Shelby come to blows on her front lawn then brings them each a soda pop. Other women waft through the film like smoke: Secretaries in wood-paneled offices handing manila folders to men in navy suits; corporate wives smiling silently, always positioned one step behind their husbands shoulder; young racing fans that serve as pretty dcor on racing podiums. To the victor go the spoils.The critique I heard most often about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood could easily apply here: This is a film celebrating those nostalgic golden days when white men ruled. Its pretty to watch if you can suspend thinking for two hours about what that world must have been like for any ambitious or creative folks who didnt fit that demographic.Behind the Shiny ExteriorThe central message of Ford v Ferrari that the answer to the question Who are you? is what really matters in life is delivered in the beginning, middle and end of the film by Shelby. The biggest problem with that is Carroll Shelby. The man who was responsible for turning the Ford Mustang into the epitome of American muscle occupies a god-like status in car culture and embodied everything the red-blooded American male of the era was supposed to hold supreme.Some of it is admirable: A former chicken farmer from Texas who pulled himself up by his own proverbial bootstraps, Shelby wore overalls when he raced and built his own cars with Ford-tough V8 engines. He beat the Europeans at their own game at Le Mans. In his later years, he established a charity that helped provide organ transplants for children.Most of it was not: Shelby was a notorious womanizer who blew through six marriages and was heading toward divorce from his seventh when he died. He spoke to everyone with language so blue it was legendary; ask any car journalist or professional driver who knew him, and theyve got plenty of descriptive words to describe the way he treated anyone within earshot. Many of those words are unprintable here.During all 152 minutes of the film, men dominate the screen for 98 per cent of the timeFor fun, he shot lions, elephants and rhinoceroses on animal hunts in Africa. He filed so many lawsuits against Ford, against local car builders, against online forums and, ironically, against the company that later would supply all of the Cobras for the film that he become more known and reported on for that in his later years than for any feats of automotive genius.In fact, after his blast of success with the AC Cobras in the 1960s and his hot-rod take on the Ford Mustang, Shelby didnt have a single real hit. Instead, there were claims he falsely represented many of the cars he
Origin: ‘Ford v Ferrari’ depicts a generation of car guys best left behind