Before watching the documentary about Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, I noted how my two favorite documentaries of the year --"Buck" and "Bill Cunningham New York"-- introduced me to two humble, inspirational men. First it was Buck Brannaman, the real-life "horse whisperer" who found healing and remarkable inner peace through rehabilitating horses and their owners. Then came New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, who quietly recorded the changing times from the seat of his bicycle. Both films made me want to pack a bag and show up on either of their doorsteps, asking for them to adopt me.
Then there's director Asif Kapadia's choice to use only archival video from news coverage, team footage, home movies, and POV footage from inside Senna's car as it weaves so tightly through the narrow track that you can't help but hold your breath the entire time. There are no cutaways to in-studio interviews of the players (only the frugal use of voiceover narration from a select group of insiders). There's no sense that time has passed since Senna's prime in the late 80s through the mid-90s. You are on this ride with Senna and you are given no option to get off as the tension builds.
Kapadia is able to pull this off because Senna's career coincided with the rise of video culture. He didn't have just one or two news clips to choose from for each significant event, as might have been the case had Senna been a star of an earlier era. No, the director had a veritable smorgasbord of options as everyone and their brother seemed to be sporting a video camera during this time period.
We get different angles of the same event. Close-ups of Senna in anguish over another driver's crash. Press conference footage showing the awkward tension between the rising star and his threatened World Champion teammate, Alain Prost. Who needs a carefully scripted dramatization of one man's personal quest for victory and redemption, say "Moneyball," when you can piece it together using the real players, in the real moment?
It's almost uncanny how well Kapadia assembled it all together. It's also a little frightening when you think about how the lives of today's legends in the making --or any of us average joes--could, twenty years from now, be reassembled, edited, beautifully scored (as "Senna" was by Antonio Pinto ) and retold to a public that was on the verge of forgetting.
But the film also made me feel manipulated. I fell in love with the handsome, driven young man with a heart of gold. How could you not the way he's portrayed in the film? I'm not exaggerating when I say Senna comes off as Christlike. He's devoted to his family. His faith in God never wavers. He never brags. He never accuses. He drives with intelligence, not bravado. He rarely loses, and when he does or (gasp) makes a mistake, he always acknowledges the lesson learned. He values life outside the track, dedicating resources to help poor children in his homeland and pondering where life will take him once his driving career inevitably winds down. Senna's entire nation, crippled by poverty and political oppression, rested its hopes on his bronzed shoulders.
If the man had a flaw, Kapadia doesn't show it. Even his sex life, which one must presume was robust, is merely winked at. We get no sense of Senna as a boyfriend, friend, lover. Even his familial relationships are mostly unexplored. Believe me, I wanted to go along with the "Senna as Saint" storyline. Everyone wants a hero. All the better if he actually existed. For my own enjoyment, I was willing to buy in. That was, until this prominent credit popped up at the film's conclusion:
Made with the cooperation of Institute Ayrton Senna
This is the charitable organization established by Senna's sister after his death.
All of a sudden it felt like I'd been taken in by a highly produced tribute video made by the Senna family in honor of their beloved Ayrton. That doesn't make him any less captivating, nor does it mean I'm no longer moved by the film. In fact, I can't get it out of my head. It just has an asterisk beside it now.
But I'd say Kapadia's most impressive accomplishment is his ability to weave in to the story a sort of "Formula One 101." I knew nothing of the sport other than what Sacha Baron Cohen showed me in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." At the close of "Senna," I understood the basics of the Grand Prix competition, both on the track and throughout the season. I got a feel for the politics and money that brought the sport to the relatively corrupt level of almost all professional sports. I even came to appreciate the immense skill the sport requires and why someone might find the thrill of being behind the wheel enough of a reason to put their life on the line.
So add an asterisk to my 2011 Best Of list and consider "Senna" to be on it.
