Picoreview: F1 – unexpectedly good, but also hoo boy.
I’d been wibbling about going to see F1, because Brad Pitt is Problematic and I’m not much of a car race fan, but also…I like movies, and it looked like it might be decent. Somebody whose film opinions I frequently agree with saw it and said it was, in fact, a terrific underdog story (a thing I’m a sucker for), but also that Pitt was “uncannily flat” in it. So I became kind of more interested in seeing it, because it took me half a decade or more to come around to the fact that Brad Pitt can act (I just didn’t believe anybody that pretty was in Hollywood for his acting talent, and I saw probably half a dozen films with him, DESPITE him, before I was finally like “…no, god damn it, actually he’s that pretty AND a good actor”), and if he was failing to here, I wanted to see why.
So I’ll talk about that in a minute, but first: this is legitimately a good underdog movie. It’s edge of your seat stuff, and I don’t even care about racing at all. The supporting cast is all good, Javier Bardem is delicious, and Sarah Niles, whom I know from Ted Lasso, is in it, and I could look at that woman forever, so even if she’d been terrible it would have been worth getting to look at her (and she was not, ofc, terrible). There are some cameos from actual drivers, which I could tell sheerly because some of the shots were very definitely “and look, here’s a real driver!” :) Anyway, yeah, I honestly thought it was good.
But we do have the problem that is Brad Pitt. So after seeing it, I replied to the guy who’d thought Pitt was flat, and I’m just going to record what I said verbatim (with the addition of who character names refer to) because it covers it all. There are spoilers, but very little I think is a significant spoiler. So:
I’ve now seen F1 and would like to posit a countertheory to “Pitt is uncannily flat” in it. :)
(he invited me to do so.)
I think you may be looking at the wrong performance. And possibly may not be the target audience.
So I went in with your commentary in mind, but what I found myself thinking very early on was “Oh, this is Brad Pitt being BRAD PITT. His most charming, affable, lowkey kind of an asshole self.”
I think THAT’s the performance to be watching in this movie. It’s about rehabilitating his image, & I think it may be primarily aimed at women. There’s a LOT in it that speaks directly to that idea, including him making fun of his boy band era. It’s deliberately reminding us girls how hot he was. Bernadette (Sarah Niles, playing the rookie, JP’s, mother) actually makes it textual, commenting (to JP’s horror) on how handsome Sonny (Pitt) is.
Sonny’s first press conference also calls it out. The reporter is almost literally asking about stuff Pitt himself did. He acknowledges it all with single-word answers, thereby making it funny: “Would you do anything differently?”
“Yup.”
And now that he’s acknowledged it, we can move on!
Which is followed by a story in which structurally the acknowledgement of “yeah, this guy is kind of a dick” is subsumed by him doing everything to help ̷h̷i̷s̷ ̷k̷i̷d̷ whoops no I mean the rookie win. When he yells at him, it’s for JP’s own good. And when JP gets hurt, it’s his own fault because he didn’t listen to ̷D̷a̷d̷ I mean Sonny. I think those scenes are meant to revise the narrative around Pitt. To raise questions about, or sympathy for, the allegations laid at his feet.
So I think Pitt is playing exactly the role he’s supposed to be in this movie: gorgeous, a bit smarmy, affable, laid-back in an intense way, self-effacing/supportive & yet miraculously earning the comeback kid prize, then being allowed to go do what he wants with the rest of his life, scot-free.
And he’s doing a really good job with that role. It’s just that it’s not the same role it looks like he’s supposed to be playing.
The guy I was talking with very generously considered this a stellar interpretation and thought I’d nailed it, which was lovely of him. But I honestly thought it was really, REALLY blatant, which is why I wonder if the redemption story is aimed at women. Because I literally noticed most of the above during the film, which is not what a filmmaker wants you to be doing during their movie. In fact, the only thing I didn’t think about while watching it was how directly the press conference was responding to The Problem Of Brad Pitt: the rest of it I noticed at the time.
Anyway, so… it’s a good movie despite Pitt, and despite everything I ended up rooting for his character even as I recognized I was being completely manipulated (I mean, that’s what stories do, and I didn’t come out of it with an OUNCE more sympathy for Pitt himself, but I was there for his character’s chance of a lifetime comeback kid arc). I had a lot of other thoughts about how the people around him were supporting both Sonny and Pitt, and what that would be like as an actor, but…I also think I hold more space, generally, for the difficulty of being an actor offered a part in a major movie across from a major (even if problematic) star than a lot of people do, maybe.
Because, like, if I was Irish actor Kerry Cordon, coming off a highly praised turn in Banshees of Inisheran, and I was offered the role of a wickedly intelligent, has-something-to-prove love interest across from Brad Pitt in a major film? I would take it. Because it’s a fleeting fucking industry, and yes, sometimes you pass up a role and it turns out that frees you up for something even more incredible and maybe that chance was supposed to be the Moment for you all along, but I think it’s a lot more frequent that you get hurt filming Mission Impossible 2 and Hugh Jackman becomes a superstar while you…well, keep getting jobs, at least, but the moment is gone. And who knows, maybe the moment wouldn’t have happened at all if Dougray Scott had kept the lead role in X-Men, but it’s hard to imagine his career would have been the same if he had, and it had.
And then you have Javier Bardem, who doesn’t need the role in terms of visibility, so, y’know, IDK if he and Pitt were friends before the film or not, but ok, sure, I can see why you might object to him taking on a role in a film largely about redeeming Pitt’s image. OTOH… his part is just good, guys. It is. It’s a role built on faith and idiocy and friendship and love of the game, and I totally understand wanting to play it. So I feel like there’s just…there’s moral ideology at war with reality in discussing these things, and I’m absolutely sure there are plenty of people whose moral ideology is powerful enough that in these kinds of situations, they’d walk away from the job. I obviously don’t think my own is that strong. :)
Anyway, if you like racing films, you’ll probably like F1, but it’ll be more despite Pitt than because of him, even if you’re not aware of the blatant manipulation (which anybody who’s read this far obviously would be :D). Everybody around him really does bring their A game, I think, and it makes for a really good sports movie.