Senna

I wouldn't normally be too worried about posting spoilers about a documentary. One does not spoiler The World At War by telling people that the Nazis lose and Hitler dies in the end. However, this is a different kettle of fish, because this feels much more like a movie. Imagine you yourself were to plan a film of your life. You would weave a narrative including all you greatest achievements and most crushing defeats, and you'd then have to work out how to film those scenes, because, of course, when they happened to you, nobody was filming. However, in Ayrton Senna's case, that's simply not true. Everything he's famous for was captured on film, either by race cameras, TV sports cameras, or the voracious lens of the TV interview after the fact. At least on the sporting side of his life, it seems like his life could scarcely be better documented, and there's some sense that as he lived for the sport, no other side is necessary.

So, as the footage is actually available, the director Asif Kapadia has seemingly taken on the task of sifting through the - probably in total - years of film of Senna's life, and assembled two hours of it into a narrative. There's not a moment on screen that's not film from the time that's being portrayed - no modern returns to old scenes, no talking head interviews, with much of the voice over being taken from contemporary interviews and commentary. Hence, it's very "in the moment", and I was at times catapulted into the nostalgia of my youth, and the cigarette branded cars, Marlboros racing against John Player Specials.

Once we get into the main body of the film, the real story is the rivalry between Alain Prost and Senna. I'm not sure how fairly this is portrayed; Senna's this paragon of pure racing for the sake of racing, whereas Prost is this conniving, calculating prick who does what he has to do to win, like some moustache twirling Dick Dastardly, only with a healthy slathering of French arrogance on top. I don't think that was fair at all, as the whole Renault Williams episode shows. Prost starts driving for Renault Williams, who are pioneering traction control, which seemingly makes Prost unbeatable, and then there's this interview with Senna complaining about how all this electronics is unfair and any idiot could win in that car. Yet, when Prost retires, who's driving for Renault Williams the following year? Mmmm-hmm...

And if this was a documentary, pure and simple, I'd be booing and throwing eggs at such plainly partisan filmmaking. However, it's not, It's Only A Movie, and as such, we've picked our hero and our villain, and judicious editing shows them in that light. I'd be surprised if Prost isn't at least a little peeved by the final cut.

The film itself is thus a little odd to watch. In that if you watch it as a movie, you occasionally have to remind yourself that this is real contemporary footage, and thus there were no retakes, and no reshoots if the film quality was a bit poor. There are moments, however, that I think no action movie can remotely approach for thrills. In particular, we get car camera footage from Senna's drive in the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix, and watching that, I swear that he must have been superhuman or insane. Pod Racing in Phantom Menace is a game for five year olds in comparison.

So, is this a good documentary? No. It's too partisan. Is this the most hair raising racing movie ever made? Certainly. Especially when you consider the stakes involved.