Senna (2010)

Aside from the Milwaukee Brewers and the Green Bay Packers, my knowledge of sports is often bested by my wife’s.  I’ve never really been drawn to sports and, if I was, my commitment to my graduate education has taken away most of my free time to learn about them.  I watch maybe five football games a year, a handful of baseball games, and I’m taking part in Fantasy Football for the first time since the date of my birth this year.  I mention this for two reasons.  First, prior to watching Asif Kapadia’s Senna (2010), I only knew of the existence of Formula 1 racing and I was ignorant to Ayrton Senna’s existence, let alone his racing career.  Secondly, despite this personal ignorance, I found the film to be one of the best of the year. 

Kapadia’s documentary covers the rise and fall of Senna in his own words.  Given that the bulk of his career took place of the 1980s and 1990s, during the period of the VHS tape and video as a dominant media form, there seems to have been a glut of archival footage (from in-camera camera footage to interviews from the pit and press conferences) for Kapadia to wrangle.  Having this luxury, he constructs a tale from beyond the grave about a passionate Brazilian Catholic who was both an aggressive practitioner of motorsports, sometimes to his detriment, and a man who used racing as a means of transcending day to day existence in search of a higher power. 

While Senna is the film’s primary narrator, Kapadia also includes interviews with ESPN commentators, other Formula 1 racers (including his antagonist for much of his career, Alain Prost), Senna’s family, and others.  These interviews are largely disembodied, playing on the soundtrack over visuals from the grid, identified only by text on the screen that is slightly obscured by the faux-analog snow of the VHS tape.  By doing so, Kapadia gives us a story that personal without being insular, conflict that is human (especially in the Prost section of the film) while refusing to acknowledge it purely from Senna’s point-of-view.  Moreover, by taking the emphasis off the documentary device of the talking head, we are given a visceral experience that captures Senna’s superhuman abilities to maneuver around a track at high speeds, never allowing us to forget that racing is both exhilarating and extremely dangerous (and he gives it a beautiful Brazilian touch by having City of God composer Antonio Pinto on board). 

Moreover, Kapadia, while he does superimpose Senna’s life onto a three-act structure and gives us a fine antagonist in Senna’s foil Prost, the politically savvy, coldly calculating “Professor” of racing, never allows us to forget the larger picture.  First, he draws our awareness to what Senna meant to his native country in a time of turmoil and how he tried to use his power, money, and influences to change it.  Secondly, how much faith and personal fulfillment in becoming a better athlete drove Senna to take the risks he took (it’s a picture about faith, not religious fanaticism).  Finally, it is a chronicle about how Formula 1 racing became what it is today.  If it wasn’t for Senna’s stunning rise, the sport may not have become as culturally visible around the world.  Moreover, if it wasn’t for his tragic fall in an age of transition (for both the sport and the cars these men are driving), the sport might not have become safer for its participants. 

The film isn’t without a few minor flaws, some of which may not exist in the longer, international version.  First, Kapadia does an excellent job of making the non-Formula 1 fan feel comfortable with the cars, the rules, and the racers.  However, during the sport’s brief transition to electronic assisted driving, I felt a little lost, mainly because he didn’t go into the same amount of detail that defined the first two-acts.  Given that this transition frustrated Senna and that the sport and his new team’s transition back to analog racing somewhat contributed to his demise, it would have been helpful to know what, exactly, was going on (this also had legal ramifications after his death for his team, another thread the film does not really acknowledge).  Secondly, Kapadia briefly introduces Senna’s care for Brazil and the beginnings of his charity work only to awkwardly transition back into his racing career, ultimately revealing what he accomplished in a concluding bit of text.  Given the rough transition in what is otherwise an extremely smooth piece of filmmaking, it feels as if a reel was missing (and makes me wonder if this is where the cut sequences originated from) and it is an odd oversight.  Still, despite these minor flaws, Senna, like its subject, is memorable, exhilarating, and heartbreaking.