Senna

In May 1994 Formula One race car driver Ayrton Senna died after crashing his car during a race. He was at the height of his popularity after winning the world championship three times.

The structure of this documentary is director Asif Kapadia assembling archival footage to create a portrait of this sporting legend. While they interview people it is not shown and instead they speak by voice over. This is a good format and makes you focus more on the subject rather than being interrupted with other people. But the problem for me is that there were a couple of instances that needed better explaining but weren't. Such as an incident Ayrton had with Alain Prost at the Japanese Grand Pix. They used terms and explanations which I did not understand. I would have liked a visual aid to help explain why the judges went with the decision they did. There a couple of other problems I had. In a lot of the reviews I've been reading there has been a lot of interesting material that's not been included. I understand that to make the film interesting and entertaining they had to exclude some material but the things I have heard mentioned would have been good to be included. Part of the problem might be that Senna's family had approval over the documentary because it included family home video footage, so the film is very favourable to Senna. It is definitely a glowing portrait of him so you have to maybe take what is said with a grain of salt. Despite that it is certainly very entertaining and an interesting look at Formula One racing. It highlights quite nicely the politics that go into a sporting event like this. When you have that much money being spent its inevitable to have lots of people wanting to have their say. It is very admirable to Senna that he was willing to play the game when he didn't like it because of his love of the sport. He says that his favourite time was early in his career when he was go-kart racing and it was just about racing not politics.

Don't get the wrong idea. While I did have a few problems with the film I still found it very enjoyable. Ayrton is painted in a very favourable light so maybe don't expect the full picture.