Les Mans '66

Ron Howard’s Rush, about James Hunt’s single Formula 1 victory against his rival Niki Lauda was a peerless cinematic portrayals of rivalry on the road. This excellent film, which is also—perhaps better—known as Ford v. Ferrari, tells the story of two men and two motor companies: Ferrari, full of Italian pride in engineering, and Ford: the giant company that pioneered the American automobile and was not as good as it used to be. Nobody ever thought they could create a sports car, but this film dramatises how they did.

It’s also the story of two men: Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), the racer with a heart condition that means he has to get in the workshop and put the cars together; and Ken Miles (Christian Bale), the irascible Brummie driver whose knowledge of the entire car and the processes required to drive fast. The two men don’t start well, and their fiery relationship is the only fire that subsides as the story continues, with respect and friendship.

The film is a long look at every aspect of the story: the broke Miles has his garage shut by the tax people, and it’s this that makes him go back on his previous decision not to work with Ford. The Ford ‘way’ is very much the opposite of Ken Miles’, and the great office blocks and Man Men style is far away from the race circuit. The Italians insult Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) which is what fuels his desire to bury them at Le Mans, but getting there requires that the marketing people and those in charge of the “brand” concede to the people who know how to make cars go fast, and it’s this failure of one part of the team to take any notice of the other that’s another great part of the story. It is the traditional ‘Management’ versus ‘Worker’ but in this case the people on the track know what they’re talking about, and those in the offices just don’t. 

Outside of racing, Ken Miles’ wife Mollie (Catriona Balfe) rises above the traditional wife role by making the taciturn Ken tell her what he’s planning in a high-speed driving sequence that’s the only part of the film that seems unreal. She brings up their son, and the father/son bond shown here is especially nicely drawn.

This is a film about racing cars, though, and the races are particularly good. There’s no feeling that computer-generated imagery is used, which means that it must be well done. The camera is right in the car or outside it as Ken Miles points the front end straight at the side of a corner and then powers out of it. The Le Mans sequence: dark night, daylight, and rain. It is all so different from modern Formula 1, but that’s probably a good thing. The crashes—and there are a lot throughout the film—are horrific, fiery inferno with what seems like agonisingly slow response.

But the real power here is in the performance of Christian Bale. Matt Damon does a fine job, but he does what he always does and is often mocked for doing. He holds the film together. Bale’s physical transformation is marvellous: he physically embodies a man who is confident to the point of arrogance and outspoken to the point of rudeness, as well as spanner-throwing anger. It’s a very different role to Dick Cheney, whom the actor also inhabited in full. This is another role that goes a long way to make this film one of the best of the year. It’s for others to decide how it holds up in the list of motor racing films, but it’s a long and satisfying, and hugely enjoyable move that’s pretty much unmissable.