Review: Senna

Senna is magnificent. Who’d have thought a documentary consisting purely of archive footage of the career of a racing driver could be so compelling?

If there’s one film you have to see this year, then it’s Senna. Yes it’s a documentary, and there are even some subtitles to deal with but that doesn’t matter. Senna is a game-changing film that future film students should be made to watch before being allowed to go near a camera. It’s that good.

Senna takes you on a fairly simple, chronological trip through the career of the young, ambitious, Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna. That career was cut short at the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola on 1 May 1994.

There’s no weird editing, no times where you’re in the least bit confused as to what is going on, no extraneous experts providing vacuous observations. The only commentaries you hear are from people who knew Senna and from the man himself.

Director Asif Kapadia didn't shoot a single minute of footage. Instead he went through thousands of hours of archive footage (race footage, interviews, home movies) to choose the bits that could be sewn together to make the finished film and the meticulous sifting process he went through really pays dividends.

And even though the focus is firmly on one man, the people around him – including the doctor who befriends him and then has to watch him die – are given just enough room to feed into the story without getting in the way and creating unnecessary subplots.

Like Titanic, everyone going to see Senna will know how the story ends. But in terms of tension, humanity, passion and plot Senna blows Titanic out of the water. Sometimes it’s the commentary, sometimes it’s a close up shot of Senna’s face conveying what actors spend years trying to mimic, sometimes it's archive footage.

Then sometimes it’s watching Senna race around the track and getting to see just what an incredible driver he was.

Not that you have to have even the faintest interest in motor racing (although there’s a high chance you’ll be hooked by the end of the film).

Knowing how it ends only adds poignancy to the scenes where he talks about his faith in God and about a hoped-for future that we know will not be his.

Women would like this film – women loved Ayrton Senna, as certain scenes in the film show – but this is definitely a man’s film first and foremost.

Proof of this came as I looked around the cinema just before the opening credits - not since I visited the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam as a teenager and dared to venture into their screening room have I been in a cinema that was filled with so many men sitting on their own staring expectantly at a screen.

Politics

Senna was a man’s man who just wanted to race cars and to do it well. He didn’t want to get involved in the politics of Formula One, but was pulled into it just the same, and more often than not he got the raw end of the deal.

He was single minded, in that his aim was to win and never to accept second best. But unlike his clinical rival Alain Prost, you never doubt there’s a feeling person in there.

He may have got caught up in the big-money Formula One machine, he may have spent his career sitting in a state of the art racing machine, but he was no machine himself.

There are no weak points in Senna but moments stand out, such as when he squirms while getting chatted up on live Brazilian TV by his future girlfriend; such as the primal scream he emits when he wins a gruelling race on home territory for the first time; such as when he has to find every bit of strength he possesses to lift a hard-won trophy.

Such as when he watches the death of fellow racing driver Roland Ratzinburger just one day before his own untimely death on the same racetrack. He has to turn away from the screen – you won’t be able to.

The scenes leading up to his death are chilling. We’re shown shots of those close to him. Unlike the viewer of this film, they’re unaware of what’s about to happen. The footage of him shaking his head as he sits in a racing car he's not happy with, moments from death, might make you think that he sensed something was about to go very badly wrong.

With Senna, there is just one disappointment - that the man himself didn’t have a longer career and isn’t around now to enjoy this brilliant celebration of his brilliant life.

Nick Bradshaw