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Monday, February 3, 2014

Senna (2010) [PG-13] *****


A film review by Shawn Levy for The Oregonian on August 25, 2011.

Ego, courage, reflexes, endurance, brute will, a delicate touch, financial backing, and some luck: these are some of the attributes of a champion race car driver. And Ayrton Senna may have had more of them all than anyone.

Hailing from Brazil, which has a tradition of international racing champions, Senna won the coveted Formula One title three times between 1988 and 1991, and finished in the sport’s top four for nine straight years.

Among his fellow racers, the stylish, feverish and sincerely religious Senna was considered a little reckless, a little thin-skinned and a little too fond of himself; and his rivalry with Frenchman Alain Prost, a sometime teammate, was the stuff of legend. But Senna was acknowledged even by his detractors as skilled and resilient, and at home he was feted as rapturously as a soccer player or pop star.

Senna died, famously, in a single-car wreck in the 1994 San Marino (Italy) Grand Prix, passing into legend at the age of 34. That accident came in awful conditions that Senna himself had decried before the race (his history of lobbying for safety made him a thorn in racing authorities’ sides).  And it ended prematurely what seemed liable to become the greatest racing career of all time.

This story is detailed in Senna, a gripping, intimate and rich documentary by Asif Kapadia, which uses volumes of interviews with friends, colleagues, rivals and Senna himself to tell the story of the man and the athlete without narration or interpretation.  In some ways, Senna is as pure and clean as the man’s sport: as actor/racer Paul Newman liked to say, the winners of auto races are determined, unlike movies, by objective criteria.  And although it’s a subjective judgment, it’s hard to see how anyone wouldn’t be absorbed by this fascinating film about a formidable driver and man. [Levy’s rating: B+ or 78-80 in my rating system]

Blogger’s comment: This is a fascinating documentary into the life of Ayrton Senna, one of the premier F1 drivers in the 1980s and early 1990s, beginning with his first season (1984). He was particularly effective in wet weather, but was able to push his car just beyond its theoretical limits in any weather.

The best F1 drivers are always driving at the limit, which means there is no room for error and if they miscalculate, an accident (which F1 drivers call a shunt) can easily be fatal. By deduction, if a driver makes a mistake from which he is able to recover without accident, it means he is not driving at the limit, and he will never be a F1 champion driver.

SPOILER: Ayrton Senna was a highly spiritual individual and just before his last race he related that God had spoken to him and that he would receive the greatest gift of all. Senna was leading in his final race, the Brazilian Grand Prix, when he left the course at a rather routine left-hand corner and crashed into the wall. The suspicion was that his steering had frozen. The autopsy showed he had no broken bones, not even bruises or lacerations, and that his only injury was a suspension arm breaking and piercing his helmet. Had the suspension arm struck six inches higher or lower he would have walked away from the accident.

Labels: auto-racing, biography, documentary, sport, tragedy


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