Title: Senna

Director: Asif Kapadia

Featuring: Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, others

In a world where religion and politics often divide folks quite nastily, sports — and of course in particular sports heroes — can serve to unite and uplift people, especially if their field of competition is international, and therefore allows for a degree of nationalistic fervor to creep into play. Such was certainly the case with Ayrton Senna, a fiery and hard-charging Formula One racing star who rose to prominence and a certain level of domination in the sport in the 1980s and early ’90s, serving as a rare beacon of pride and hope for his homeland of Brazil. A new documentary bearing his name — and the stamp of Audience Award prizes at both the Sundance and Los Angeles Film Festivals — tells his story, in a unique and interesting way that doesn’t necessitate an abiding occupational interest.

Actually, the title may indicate the star of the show, but Senna is also in significant ways about French-born racing star Alain Prost, the man whom a young Senna would first compete against, then team with, and ultimately supplant as World Champion. The film chronicles their uneasy alliance under the McLaren racing team banner, and how any detente they had would eventually shatter in the crucible of competition, and perhaps owing as well to their native personality differences. Known as “The Professor,” Prost was (if such a thing can exist) a cautious racer, more than willing to pay heed to overall points standings, and not jeopardize his overall position late in the season by pressing to finish any higher than he needed to in a given, specific race. He was also a skilled glad-hander and navigator of the sports’ political mechanisms, perhaps aided by a shared nationality with longtime Formula One president Jean-Marie Balestre.

Senna, on the other hand, came from a well-to-do family, but seemingly drove with the sort of chip on his shoulder one might typically associate with someone with a disadvantaged socioeconomic background. He was a sort of forerunner to Talladega Nights‘ fictional Ricky Bobby (“I wanna go fast!”), and had no time or patience for unspoken Formula One protocol or niceties about how to pass. He drove to win, period. His competitive streak, meanwhile, was matched by an uncanny skill for flourishing even further in the sort of rain and inclement weather that would cause most drivers to ease off the throttle just a bit.

Director Asif Kapadia, working from a framework script by Manish Pandey, eschews the usual presentation of talking heads, and instead layers interview footage from racing reporters and broadcasters under footage of the events, which is a smart and savvy choice that gives Senna a much more streamlined and theatrical feeling than many documentaries. Even though some of the footage is dated and degraded (it’s comprised of various film stocks and video, with some even taken from YouTube), the visual absence of present-day subjects preserves a certain suspense for those who may be unfamiliar with Senna’s story, and also serves to underscore his rivalry with Prost. Most fascinating and exciting, additionally, is a considerable amount of material from inside the driver’s cockpit of Senna’s vehicles. This helps give viewers a charged, you-are-there feeling, and investment in the proceedings.

If there’s a knock, it’s that the movie’s portrayal of Senna doesn’t quite dig deep enough into his personal life to match and marry the trials and tribulations of his amazing career to what he was going through off the track. Senna ably communicates what the driver — with both his philanthropic efforts and the manner in which he comported himself — meant to Brazil as a whole, at a time when so many of its poor had no hope for economic self-betterment. And it reveals the importance of both Senna’s faith and his family to him; his sister and mother are among the interviewees, and there’s also family home video vacation footage. But, watching these amazing exploits and the manner in which he almost literally made the car dance around the edges of Monte Carlo’s winding streets, say, there’s less of a sense of Senna the man than one would want from a movie like this. Kapadia’s film humanizes the legend, but also remains at a certain remove.

Technical: B+

Story: B-

Overall: B

Written by: Brent Simon