This is a review that I’m not surprised took me this long to write/finish. Not because I was meticulously placing the words or deciding which angle to attack it from, but because I quite liked it (the film) and didn’t think my writing about it would mushroom into something worthwhile. I am probably, therefore, a lousy reviewer in that respect.
The cinemas in Malaysia cannot be counted on to show anything but movies with explosions or mushy romance – sometimes the two overlap. With that in mind, I had to find a way to watch it outside of ‘traditional means’. There seems to be many ways to achieve that end here in Malaysia.
For the sake of this review, let’s assume that it was playing at my local theatre and that watching it would only mean around 10 bucks out of my wallet and a 10 minute drive. I still wouldn’t have gone. For good reasons. Largely because of the fear that I’d be subjecting myself to an experience that would leave me in an incompatible emotional state with sitting in a public auditorium with strange people within earshot of my restrained squeaking. So I bravely decided that in my room, on my Macbook Pro would be a better venue for my inevitable unmanly display.
I had no clue of what to expect outside of the positive reviews its garnered and seeing Top Gear plug it at least twice1. But a movie about an F1 driver? Seriously, no way I could miss out on this.
I was pretty tired during my first viewing and I can’t remember why I ignored the logic to just put it off until the next day. In my half-dazed state only my eyes and a few other basic brain functions remained, allowing me to be as easily impressed with Senna as would my ten year old self. There was much glorious engine noise sprinkled in parts with narrative voices to make sense of the amazing footage but I was just burying my face into my bed pillow until they’d shut up, allowing the interviews with Senna or Prost or some actual race action resumed. I was awake enough to absorb the story and the tragedy, the thrill and the joy until the credits rolled. And yes, I did cry.
Yeah yeah..
“Tomorrow. One more time.” was the last thing I probably mumbled before I my face slammed back into my matress, leaving all the lights and the laptop as they were.
When I emerged and could finally gather enough coherence to make sense of last night’s final hours, the first couple of paragraphs about this film saw first light. They weren’t very good. So I watched it again that evening, still not finding a meaningful opinion but happy to solely enjoy the spectacle.
In most parts, Senna is a great piece of filmmaking, the result of real effort – the kind that I find hard grasp for myself. Within the genre of a documentary and if viewed dispassionately (which I only managed the 3rd time watching it), it can be hard to fault. The passion for the subject matter comes across immediately. Asif Kapadia, the director, and his team clearly holds Ayrton Senna, his family, his career, his spirit, in very high regard. Ayrton Senna de Silva was, and still is, my hero and I’m glad the man at the helm of this film shares this admiration.
You can pick faults at everything and despite my wanting to leave it alone and rave about it to everyone around me, there were a couple of things that made me squint in confusion. For a start, the title is a little ambiguous. It should be called Senna: The F1 Era. The title Senna implies that it is a reflection of his entire life. And as a reflection of his entire life, I think Senna falls short. I don’t completely agree that it deserves all the universal praise it has been awarded. And I say that as someone who wells up with pride and disbelief that a film about a dead racing driver from nearly two decades ago managed to cause such a huge stir when it was released at the start of association football season. Just as a great race in any motorsport is the residual of all the effort hammered out in the days and weeks leading up to it, so too a great driver and a great man is the legacy of previous struggles. In during the film, we get a few key glances at Ayrton’s go-karting days in the late 70s, but confusingly without peeks into his subsequent tribulations in Formula Ford and the fierce competition between Martin Brundle in Formula 3.
Journalistic corroboration is delivered through two people I’ve never heard of before who do a decent job to fill the narration roles. Experts, they are, but I just needed a higher degree of vindication from the people who went head-to-head with Senna, people from his life rather than outsiders looking in. There’s no Nigel Mansell, no Neslon Piquet, no Gerhard Berger, no Rubens Barichello to lend their surely amazing first-hand accounts. But the move to leave most of the scenes un-narrated, whether deliberately or not, was genius. The film is notable for its absence of talking heads to provide commentary for a noisy and chaotic grand prix atmosphere, where some would argue it needs it most. There’s so many scenes in this film that don’t need words, Ayrton’s expression imparts more than any expert commentary could ever hope to.
So its not an intimate look at his life before F1 but instead focuses more on his many epic moments during F1. Fine. Great. But to find out by the end that the 93’ Donnington race opening lap was swept over is just incomprehensible.2
Secondly, the on-board footage during the Monaco GP didn’t sync to rhythm of the lap. It really annoys me when these instances of over-dubbing creates a rift between the sounds and the behavior of man/machine. Why they didn’t just leave the damn filmstrip alone baffles me.
This disconnect is aggravating enough when you’re watching a regular DVD but when you’ve got Ayrton Senna, a 1200bhp turbo V8 and a manual gearchange to look forward to hearing, its just unbearable.
Nearing the end of the film, and we all know how it ends at Imola in 1994, it became evident that many of Ayrton’s friends, family, former rivals and colleagues chose to exclude themselves from this production. A crying shame, honestly – and I hope they can finally see how beautiful and moving this film is, both on small and big screens, to understand how their insight and support could have added the final golden piece to this powerful tribute. The weekend of the climactic San Marino race began and the complete absence of nothing but ambient sounds adds a heavy poignancy for the events I knew were about to unfold, which became even more muted when Roland Ratzenberger had a fatal accident during qualifying. Only the simple narrative of images, tools clanking, wailing sirens, nervous hands, darting eyes and facial expression; the roar of a monstrous V10 exploding against Imola’s concrete walls.
The climax of Ayrton’s crash and the aftermath, that final 20 minutes of induced stillness are the film’s crowning glory. I teared up again.
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