All the Formula 1 fans and also a native Brazilian are in an agreement and can easily understand when they are explained that Ayrton Senna was one of the greatest drivers to have ever lived. Great in terms of stunning looks, youthfulness, charisma along with an ability to make even the toughest of times turn in his favor as quite during his late teenage where he was seen advocating for his home Brazil. But during the San Marino Grand Prix, he tragically passed away in a car accident while taking pole position at the age of just 34. Asif Kapadia’s excellent documentary “Senna” which was released in 2010 has completely exposed the life and journey of the amazing driver by making use of numerous archival clips and putting them together in perfect synergy. Netflix’s recent attempts to add drama to the life of the driver are energizing in nature, but the season tends to become monotonous halfway through.
Showrunner Vicente Amorim begins developing a sort of legendary narrative for Senna who has been portrayed by the baby faced charismatic Gabriel Leone and believe it or not Mr. Amorim takes his starting point from that devastating and life-ending crash. Amorim claims that for some reason his father had harbored the belief that Senna would soon uncover a fascination for steering wheels, so the show depicts him vroom-vrooming with a parked car pretending to be a child. With a well-off father, Senna was able to experience a wonderful life that fostered his passion for racing, first showcased with his venture into go-kart racing in Brazil.
As his career progressed, he advanced to the more competitive Formula Ford and even Formula One racing; Senna displays an interest about reaching a finish line (although at times little backward) alongside with a willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve it. Middle eastern anti-brazilianism showcases the hatred Senna endured alongside his french racing counterpart Alain Prost, who started off as a teammate but down the road became his strongest adversary.
Separate parts of this series would spend one day praising and criticizing Senna, and Leone’s committed turn would patch one of the many holes this show’s engine almost has. He is easily the spitting image of Senna even with Senna’s life’s attitude as well as his vulnerability being literally portrayed through him. Most of the time, the script does not provide him with complexity to explore in depth Senna in Amorim bewilderingly has a very narrow vision but he manages to balance the tension, anger and happiness that Senna’s role demand superbly.
But the real star is the races themselves, high-octane sequences cut and shot expertly to capture the feeling of immense speed and Senna’s place in the field. However, some of the later ones feel a bit more CGI assisted, as they lack the appeal of Speed Racer for my liking. The level of realism is quite high when it comes to gear shifts, tire squeals, and low angle close up shots of Senna through his steering wheel. Compared to these movies, they do hold up decently, with the assumption that the budget was considerably tighter ($30 million N/A). It helps also in keeping the races apart from each other, that every new race comes with a new challenge for Senna. For example having to race in a heavy downpour or an even stranger one where he has to remove duct tape he has placed over parts of his engine which give him an edge until the engine overheats. In one of the early races, the show lingers sickeningly on a shot of a small centipede moving across the street while a bunch of Formula one cars raced towards it. What a quaint way to make an image of speed.
Unfortunately, what works less well are the two things that “Senna” portrays as his other loves apart from racing: women and Brazil. During his lifetime, Senna was an advocate for the Brazilian people – although this is depicted quite simplistically by the millions of Brazilian children watching through the television or by a few newspaper articles that may have survived. What we lack is a full picture of the contemporary Brazilian political situation and Senna’s charitable work for child poverty, such as his appeal to reach out to Brazilian children and which makes Senna more of a mascot than a politician.
When compared to other sources, the film tends to be quite cavalier when it comes to licensing love and the actors portraying love interests of Senna are represented more as tools to showcase the grandeur of a man or as use-and-throw. His first marriage with Lilian, played by Alice Wegmann, is reduced to his initial test of fidelity in his racing career while his affair with Brazilian actress Xuxa, Portrayed by Pámela Tomé, is rather superficial. Irony of the situation is that, there is one woman, who stays with him throughout the story, who has been entirely created for the show Laura (Kaya Scodelario), a bilingual journalist who appears mainly to flirt and explain who “Senna” is for the purpose of the story and serves as a convenient device of Senna`s unfriendliness with the journalists.
“Senna” is fairly entertaining but goes a little overboard in self aggrandizing while explaining more than 70 years of racing history in six hour-long episodes. (Let’s assume that Senna wishes to win at any cost. And that this has a rather intense negative impact on his family. How original!). One could quite easily argue that it is a great selection for casual watch during holidays with a few kids and Formula One cars buzzing across the screen in the background. But for a film that prides itself in being a lyrical masterpiece on the subject’s life spanning a decade, the 2010 doc does a better job at it.
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