Senna – review
Ayrton Senna: top Formula One driver.
Award-winning Hackney-born director Asif Kapadia has brought the legend of Ayrton Senna to the big screen with breathtaking results.
The late Formula One motor racing icon from Brazil had a need for speed, but was not just a thrill-seeking playboy. Instead, the passionate and highly religious family man was an extraordinary competitor, who believed in fate and the notion of never settling for second best. In his pursuit of greatness and his destiny, Ayrton, like no other driver, pushed himself and his car to the limit in the name of what he called “pure racing.”
Kapadia’s wonderfully revealing compilation of footage and pulsating tempo paints an enthralling picture of an honest young man who became a global superstar and a national hero for a country embroiled in social and political turmoil; inspiring the downtrodden common folk.
The action is a gloriously-nostalgic journey through a period of time when Formula One was at its most exciting, controversial and competitive. The drivers’ skills rather the machines’ capabilities were much more evident, before technological advances began to dictate.
Of our hero, we see the Senna the pin-up, the rebel and the genius. Each of these guises of the three-time Formula One World Champion are explored amongst the stunning race footage, interviews and opinions, personal home videos and enlightening pre-race and post-race internal conferences with the drivers, officials and teams members.
Crucially, there is an insightful focus on the fiercely intense and thrilling rivalry between Senna and four-time World Champion Alain Prost, in particular their turbulent relationship within the McLaren team. They were polar opposites in character and racing style and experts, writers and Senna himself portray the different philosophies of the two drivers, which made for such an engaging battle season-on-season. The difference with the Frenchman, it is said, is if Prost needed to finish fifth to clinch the championship, he would finish fifth. If Senna needed to finish fifth, he would finish first – or go out of the race trying.
An astonishingly frank interview with 70’s F1 star Jackie Stewart produces a quote which epitomises Senna’s mindset on the track. In outrage at Stewart’s suggestion that he is a dangerous driver, because the number of collisions he had been involved in, Senna said wholeheartedly, “by being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, competing to win.”
The Brazilian maverick revelled most when conditions were difficult – especially in the rain – as he took more risks, stared into the abyss and took the car with him head-on into the eye of the storm. Prost says about Senna in 1990, “He thinks he is invisible in the car, he thinks because he believes on God no harm can come to him. With this belief he pushes to the limit and over it too often and for me he takes too many risks.”
Kapadia’s documentary is a brilliant cinematic experience, in which two hours whizz by, like the cars themselves and it has everything you could want from a sports film and a biopic of a true great. There are so many voices from so many important figures in Senna’s life and the racing world, so many angles of action and so many great facets to Ayrton the phenomenon – the like of which don’t come around too often.
Senna is beautifully tragic, bold and spine-tingling. It is like a work of fiction, but the script of Senna’s life would be hard pushed to be beaten by fiction itself. The man rebelled against the politics within the sport, gave back so much to his adoring fans and his country, had enormous courage and belief and if his “pure racing” style made him the true champion he was, it also sealed his fate.
The film’s build-up to 1994’s San Marino Grand Prix – Senna’s final race – is dark, moody and moving, as it brilliantly conveys the discomfort, tension and concerns Senna suddenly felt in his new Williams-Renault car (having moved from McLaren that year) and the eerie fears that crept into the usually fearless driver. Despite these fears and the despite the death Roland Ratzenberger in qualifying the day before, once the race started, Senna was as committed as ever and his shocking death froze him in time as a legend and changed the world of motor racing forever.
Senna (12A)
Directed by Asif Kapadia
Starring: Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Frank Williams, Jackie Stewart, Ron Dennis, Nelson Piquet, Rubens Barrichello, Viviane Senna, Milton da Silva, Neide Senna.
Running time: 106 minutes
Senna is showing at the Rio Cinema until 16 June.