Contextualising this review from a personal standpoint is very important in conveying the brilliance of Asif Kapadia’s portrait of a life cut short by tragedy. It is imperative that you know this is a documentary that transcends genre or a predilection for a sport that is 90 per cent tedium, and at best only intermittently exciting.
From a very young age, Aryton Senna had permeated the consciousness of a child more enamoured with a leather football than fast cars and talk of horsepower. His irrepressible persona, coupled with the flashes of excitement garnered from watching over a slightly more interested father’s shoulder, meant that his was the one car I rooted for.
This superbly constructed eulogy takes you from the ramshackle circuits of his European karting debut, right up to that fateful sixth lap of the San Marino Grand Prix in 1992. From start to finish, it grips and never lets go, in a way that no Hollywood narrative could ever come close to.
Using only archive footage, the majority of which hasn’t been seen before, means this brilliant documentary doesn’t need to rely on talking head interviews to sustain the narrative. There is so much multiple camera, behind-the-scenes material that it’s almost as if Kapadia had a full crew on set rather than using his undoubted talents to assemble it.
Senna was at odds with the French-led FIA, and the sequences which feature the pre-race driver meetings are electric, as the Brazilian goes head-to-head over safety and race penalties.
There’s also Senna’s famed rivalry with championship nemesis Alain Prost, who is here painted as the pantomime bad guy that you all remember, but it is never in question that it is a sporting rivalry, not a personal one.
The duel Japanese Grand Prix incidents that are focal points in the film are riddled with dramatic tension, and trying to stop the bottom lip trembling as Senna reacts to the fatal accidents that became pre-cursors to his own, is truly heartbreaking stuff.
And then there is the crash, and by the time it arrives you‘ve almost forgotten it’s going to happen as you’ve been seduced for 90 minutes by this charismatic young daredevil. Senna was a risk-taker and had a questionable approach to driving safety – a side of his character that the film courageously never shies away from.
The impact of that day is effectively heightened by the kinetic way in which the race footage transfers to the big screen. The speed is unfathomable; what is seemingly pedestrian on television is frightening on the large canvas, so much so that you hang onto the chair arms as the on-car camera dances around the track.
The best sports documentary since When We Were Kings, Senna is a life-affirming experience. You owe it to yourself to get into gear and watch it.
[etRating value=“ 5”]
From a very young age, Aryton Senna had permeated the consciousness of a child more enamoured with a leather football than fast cars and talk of horsepower. His irrepressible persona, coupled with the flashes of excitement garnered from watching over a slightly more interested father’s shoulder, meant that his was the one car I rooted for.
This superbly constructed eulogy takes you from the ramshackle circuits of his European karting debut, right up to that fateful sixth lap of the San Marino Grand Prix in 1992. From start to finish, it grips and never lets go, in a way that no Hollywood narrative could ever come close to.
Using only archive footage, the majority of which hasn’t been seen before, means this brilliant documentary doesn’t need to rely on talking head interviews to sustain the narrative. There is so much multiple camera, behind-the-scenes material that it’s almost as if Kapadia had a full crew on set rather than using his undoubted talents to assemble it.
Senna was at odds with the French-led FIA, and the sequences which feature the pre-race driver meetings are electric, as the Brazilian goes head-to-head over safety and race penalties.
There’s also Senna’s famed rivalry with championship nemesis Alain Prost, who is here painted as the pantomime bad guy that you all remember, but it is never in question that it is a sporting rivalry, not a personal one.
The duel Japanese Grand Prix incidents that are focal points in the film are riddled with dramatic tension, and trying to stop the bottom lip trembling as Senna reacts to the fatal accidents that became pre-cursors to his own, is truly heartbreaking stuff.
And then there is the crash, and by the time it arrives you‘ve almost forgotten it’s going to happen as you’ve been seduced for 90 minutes by this charismatic young daredevil. Senna was a risk-taker and had a questionable approach to driving safety – a side of his character that the film courageously never shies away from.
The impact of that day is effectively heightened by the kinetic way in which the race footage transfers to the big screen. The speed is unfathomable; what is seemingly pedestrian on television is frightening on the large canvas, so much so that you hang onto the chair arms as the on-car camera dances around the track.
The best sports documentary since When We Were Kings, Senna is a life-affirming experience. You owe it to yourself to get into gear and watch it.
[etRating value=“ 5”]
