It doesn’t matter if the biggest race you’ve ever watched are raindrops as they slide down your window. Doesn’t matter if you think racing isn’t a sport. Doesn’t matter if you care more about who that girl is in Hunger Games than you do about actual sports. “Ayrton Senna” is a mixture of 11 letters that needs to mean something to you.
The documentary, Senna, is an award-winning film you need to watch. Plotted around Ayrton Senna and his quest through Formula One (open-wheeled racing — very European), Senna is more of a documentary about life than it is about sport. Though Senna is undoubtedly one of the best drivers (if not the best) to ever race in Fomula One — he won three World Championships — what he did along that journey makes the content of the film.
But at the film’s heart is the editing. Director Asif Kapadia compiles archived footage for his shots. There are no over-the-top graphics. It’s not flashy. It’s real. You walk away from the TV screen thinking you knew Senna. And when he’s killed on the racetrack, you feel that too.
As I said earlier, the documentary isn’t centered around sport or racing. It’s about one man and how it seems he is of something greater. Senna has this relationship with God that is just eery. It’s spiritual even. When Senna talks about death on the racetrack and repeatedly references God as his protector — when you know he is killed while leading a race and due to Kapadia’s editing, you feel like you know the guy — it’s a feeling of painful fascination.
If you really have some time on your hands and want to read more on Senna the documentary by someone better at writing than me, go here.
But if you have 106 minutes in your life that you feel like doing something productive with instead of aggressively wasting time on Facebook, watch it.
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