Ford V Ferrari: The Charm of Biopic

Ken and Shelby by the GT40 Race Car
Ken and Shelby by the GT40 Race Car

These are all good examples of a good mise-en-scene like props, costumes and all other elements that relates to the movie.The most seen element in the Ford Vs Ferrari off course is the race cars and all kinds of machine elements that related to the race car field. The Le Mans race setting were smoothly introduced to the audience too. By introducing a significant amount of racing element to the audience, it helps the people who watches the movie have a more solid understanding of what was going on with the movie. By watching the movie for many times, it’s clear that the movie is trying to link everything with their theme, the race. Since it’s very historical, all its locations, props, costumes were realistic as much as possible. For a biopic based film like this, it’s very normal and necessary for the movie to respect history. The movie should do its best to present what exactly happened before at that particular time. The viewers are satisfied of its retro model cars used in the movie. It’s exactly like the cars back in that Le Mans race.

The book suggests performances through the concept of gesturality. Traditions of performance, then, have national as well as individual resonances and need to be borne in mind when analysing a star’s performative style. (Cinema Studies, Hayward 183). Since this movie is commercial but also a biopic movie. Its performance is realistic because it’s required to fit into the actual situation, the reality. The facial expression and voice stands out more in this movie. These are two good tools to show the passion of the film and make the movie more expressive. The star performance element in that movie is given by Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio. Two huge stars from Hollywood and show outstanding performances in this movie. Bale as Ken Miles and DiCaprio as Shelby, as two most important roles in that movie, leading characters as well. Especially the scene that Ken’s championship been stolen by another racer, that kind of disappointed and helpless expression is performed by two people very vivid.

Dialogues are typical in the movie, because these biopic kind movies need tons of background info to tell the audience what was exactly going on at that time. So the best method is to use dialogues, let the audience gather information from the communications between characters. And the movie is bright itself, it does not need all those colors for heightening the atmosphere of the movie. what’s unusual is that It’s easy to see that the narrative rhythm and technique are in place, and a lot of hooks are used to keep the audience, but Miles’ actions are basically forced, while Shelby is always on the initiative. Fortunately, Bell’s acting makes the character alive and makes up for the lack of being the puppet of the plot. About the camera angles. In the race when shooting the race cars, it’s narrower and keep two cars to fit the whole screen. When shooting Shelby, the camera is wider, to make a compare with him and the audience in the movie. This cinematography fits the movie since the whole movie is basically telling a story.

Directors often experience, capture and design the keynote of films based on their own life experience, artistic sense, and social speculation and insight, according to the performance content, film themes and selected styles provided by literary scripts. Each creative department decides its own creative tone based on the keynote of the whole film determined by the director, such as the keynote of performance, modeling, photography, color and so on. In the end, the keynote of the film is expressed in the medium of abundant scene modeling elements and sound modeling elements, which is manifested in the main style characteristics and artistic characteristics of the film. All these elements are meant to help the movie to get better and make audiences adore it.

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