The Pitch:
Watching a slow moving train wreck in the form of a fast moving Formula One
car.
Funny story. I meant to watch this about 5 or more
years ago on Netflix. I actually started the movie then. Quickly, I realized
there were subtitles in it, so I stopped watching it. I don't remember the
context. I was probably doing something else at the time which wouldn't allow
me to stay on the screen the whole time. Then it left Netflix for a while. Oh
well. My loss, because this was a really solid documentary, and not even that
subtitle heavy.
I don't know much about Formula One racing. In fact,
almost all of my knowledge comes from the movie
Rush.
(On that note. They mention Niki Lauda early in this documentary, which helped
me mentally place this story) So, Senna ends up being a documentary that
taught me something while also telling a story. Kind of like how I now know the
rules to wheelchair rugby thanks to
Murderball.
I can't point to any one thing to say why this
documentary is so good. It just is. The storytelling is straightforward and
effective. It balances Senna's racing life and his personal life. It has great
reverence for the man but doesn't deify him either. His death only hangs over
the movie like a Sword of Damacles if you already know about it. The movie
doesn't repeatedly telegraph it. And it genuinely made me care about Formula
One racing, at least for a few minutes. After finishing the movie, I found
myself in a Wikipedia rabbit hole, looking up past winners, events, and racing
teams.
Best of all is that the movie doesn't overplay his
death. There aren't a lot of replays or too many shots of what was a pretty
public display. Having now watched this movie, I'm even more confused by it not
getting an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary that year*. It's really good.
*I could rant for
hours about how little sense that Oscar category makes sense, year-to-year.
Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend
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