The first thing to say about Senna is that you don’t have to know, or care, about driving round and round in circles very fast to enjoy this terrific film. Senna is a superbly crafted portrait of an exceptional individual who thrilled the world and inspired a nation. The film begins with Senna’s arrival into Formula One during the 1984 season, driving for the Oxfordshire based Toleman. He migrates to Lotus 1985 87 before moving to the Woking-based McLaren in 1988 and finally to the Williams team in 1994. His most successful period was alongside Alain Prost at McClaren-Honda. In 1988, Senna and Prost won 15 of the 16 F1 races.
Kapadia’s film covers Senna’s rise to global fame, winning three F1 world championships and leads inexorably to the tragedy of 1994. But the real focus of this film is the man beneath the helmet who is revealed as a fascinating, contradictory mix of religious faith, boyish innocence, global celebrity and reckless determination. It documents Senna’s stormy relationship with team-mate Alain Prost who is portrayed as a Dick Dastardly-like arch-rival.
With exclusive use of archive footage including family videos, Asif Kapadia has fashioned Senna’s story into a live action drama rather than a posthumous documentary were not so much hearing what happened in the past as seeing it happen before our eyes. The immediacy of the approach is exhilarating and, as we approach the inevitably tragic finale at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, deeply moving. The plane carrying Senna’s body was escorted by fighter jets into So Paulo airport. An estimated three million people lined the streets of the funeral cortege.
Senna is a documentary with the pace of a thriller, a story of motors and machines that is beyond compelling because of the intensely human story it tells. Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
A viscerally exciting and intellectually stimulating documentary Philip French. The Observer.
Shattering in the gentlest way, edited with rare care, its an affirmation of all the bonds Senna forged in his life with his family, colleagues, the people of Brazil. To emerge unmoved is just about inconceivable. Tim Robey. The Telegraph.
