Ron Howard
Rush

Background: My father raised me on bread and Formula One. On Sundays, my schoolmates waited for the football match, and I, along with my father, waited for "the race." In my childhood memory, there are a series of champions and tragedies. Overtakes, victories, and legends. My uncle, my father's brother, a university professor, argued that it was a shit sport, or rather, not a sport at all. A bunch of idiots racing in circles for two hours, risking killing themselves. My father, I understood, saw them as a kind of hero. He would sit there watching these races, petrified and intensely focused. And he would also take me to see the Grand Prix with the exaggerated noise of turbo engines, naturally aspirated engines, the speed, the madness, the pungent smell of burnt fuel on the asphalt. Everything for me, and not just for me, ended on May 1, 1994, at Tosa of the Imola circuit, sitting on the slippery grass under a sun white as a shroud, immersed in dense, humid air as warm as lake water. The last time I cheered, like all the other Ferrari fans present there rooting for Berger (!) and Nicola Larini (!!!), was when the announcer said Senna had gone off track out of our sight. We thought a Ferrari might finally win. Then I never cheered again. The flame went out. Obviously, I still watched "the races," but differently. No more getting involved with these crazy people. In fact, over the years, my uncle's words came back to me.

Film: Well, with these premises a few weeks ago, I read about a movie about James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Hunt I only remember by name but… damn! Lauda! That one I do remember. A little kid seeing someone without half a face and with a perpetually wide-eyed look racing on a Ferrari. And yes, I remember him. I remember that sometimes he started poorly but always finished among the first, if not first. And I remember that grimace twisted by flames. He was already serious on his own, but after the accident, he became a mask with only one expression. And it wasn't a friendly one. The flame reignites.

Ron Howard is not a genius. Let's say that, when he tries, he is an excellent craftsman. The film narrates the rivalry between the two drivers. It better tells different ways of living and approaching the sport. I don't know, you football fans might compare it to a Rumenigge and a George Best. If you don't know the story of their duel, don't look it up, don't search the web, go to the cinema and enjoy it because it was conceived also as a kind of thriller with a grand final scene. Epic, grandiose, definitive, and historic. The director constructed the film with many well-chosen elements like the vintage of the desaturated film with a faded greenish tint of the '70s or the excellent and powerful soundtrack that douses us with rivers of melancholic omens and let's not forget the athletic and human strength that permeates the entire story. The actors did a great job with looks, phrases, love-making, insults. Especially Daniel Brühl from Inglourious Basterds portraying Lauda, I would say almost perfect. Don't expect a screenwriting masterpiece. The film is simple, as reality is usually simple and banal. But it's also simple like a freight train coming at you on the tracks. There are no scenes with bright colors, blazing sun, and vivid reds. Everything is opaque, gray, sometimes grainy, but powerful. The Formula One cars from the year 1976 are beautiful and poignant. Those Ferraris with the tall white fin and shiny metal wings ready to devastate tracks worldwide. The director shot many scenes for real, as much as possible, and I must admit the few CGI sequences managed to not let the difference with reality be perceived.

Finally, Goddammit if I'm exaggerating (here I risk it and you know I'm risking it for you), when the director positions the camera behind the exhaust pipes of the Ferrari or the McLaren on the starting grid and the engine revs and screams like a thousand animals being torn limb from limb and rumbles and pounds like a thousand running bison, you hold onto your seat and enjoy that noise like kids in front of a funfair. Then the race. Tough experience, the hall trembles, the cockpit sways, and the driver and we along with him. Lauda's pupils twitch up close inside the helmet, while water sprayed by the rear wheels of the car ahead slides quickly over the plastic visor. Great true story of sport and perhaps of friendship, but mostly and fundamentally of two ways of facing life.

In the end, maybe my father (and my uncle) were somewhat right. This is a sport for heroes (of shit).