Review by Sam Price
Featuring Ayrton Senna, Viviane Senna, Alain Prost, Frank Williams, Jackie Stewart, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Michael Schumacher, Damon Hill, Gerhard Berger
Written by Manish Pandey
Certification UK 12A
Runtime 105 minutes
Directed by Asif Kapadia
On the face of it, Asaf Kapadia’s Senna has a lot of obstacles to overcome. Even with the undeniably formidable petrolhead contingent that keeps Top Gear on the air in a seemingly never-ending loop, any docu-biopic about a Formula 1 racing driver (no matter how much its leading subject has passed into the stuff of legend) seems predestined for a niche audience.
Nixing a traditional talking heads format, though, Senna functions both as a deeply felt portrait of a singularly driven man, and a quietly pointed exposé of the fickle nature of a competitive sport driven by corporations, advertising revenue and the need for technological gains to eclipse the safety of the driver. It’s the story of a man that was able, we’re told, in the early stages of his career to “take the car beyond its design capabilities” only to be eventually destroyed by them.
If all this sounds like a deathly dull academic exercise, take heart at Senna’s sophisticated execution. The film soars and builds to a climax that, at best, achieves the mouth-agape spiritualism that James Marsh’s Man on Wire managed to accomplish. Principally this is realised by a team of filmmakers’ wisely choosing to focus on the central rivalry between Senna and his initial teammate and eventual rival, Alain Prost. Guiding us through the rigmarole of a love/hate relationship at the fag-end of the 1980s, it’s a period of Formula One history that saw both men claw their way to international fame and world titles, and the entire affair is treated like a traditional foundation myth where Romulus figuratively murders Remus by besting him by coming in pole position at the Japanese Grand Prix. When Senna’s fortunes dwindle as the sport becomes more overtly politicised (Prost prophetically announces in archive footage that the driver has the misguided belief that he, “can’t kill himself because he believes in God”), the slow-grip inexorable horror of events to come overwhelms the narrative.
At its most transcendental, director Kapadia realises that raw footage ripped straight from Senna’s cockpit and deployed for an exhilarating cranial blood-rush that recalls the famous short, Rendezvous, will suffice over expository voiceover. An opening collage of interviews with the then go-karting wunderkind’s parents suggesting their son has been touched by the hand of God, but ironically operates a vehicle that can potentially kill its driver, works better than cod biographical psychoanalysis narrated by Morgan Freeman ever could. And the real-life machinations of Formula 1 authorities which see Senna hamstrung by FIA double standards are most palatable to audiences when we’re allowed to the see uncut footage of drivers’ meetings first-hand and without interruption.
If there’s one criticism of an otherwise unimpeachable film like Senna, it’s that it flirts dangerously close to outright hagiography. For those who know what’s coming, there’s perhaps a little too much made of Senna’s faith, and consequently his unerring belief in the kindness of his fellow human beings. There is a great stress on the essential ‘purity’ of his skill in simply driving and rising above the coarseness of “politics and money” as opposed to the base tricks of his teammates that readily engage in such activities. This teleological deification rankles a bit and doesn’t have the personalised veracity of, say, Capturing the Friedmans or Tarnation, and instead dilute Kapadia’s targets, which arguably seem to surpass any one man. These minor drawbacks aside, though, Senna is a film for everyone.