SENNA
“STUNNING”
DAILY MAIL
“THRILLING,
DEEPLY COMPELLING” EMPIRE
“EXHILARARING”
GUARDIAN
“UNDENIABLY EMOTIONAL”
TIME OUT
“RIVETING”
LOADED
SENNA: THE LEGEND IN HIS OWN WORDS As the film shows at the Sheffield Doc/Fest, Glen Ferris talks to director Asif Kapadia about the challenges of bringing the F1 legend to the big screen… You’ve avoided the usual documentary format of talking heads and instead sifted through what must have been thousands of hours of newsreel, home movies and in-car camera footage. How did you get hold of all of it and how long did it take you? In total, it’s taken us about six years to make this film, I’ve been on it for about four years. We realised quite early on that getting footage was not going to be a problem – there was plenty. What I didn’t realise was how huge he was in Brazil, even before he got to Formula One. He was huge in Japan, too, because he used a Honda engine. So he was always being followed by someone with a camera. Do you need to be a petrolhead to enjoy this? I have a background in drama direction and my job was to make this into a film that would appeal to people who aren’t fans of F1, or don’t know who Senna is. The idea was to not use the classic documentary-making devices, like talking heads or voiceovers. He was so brilliant at expressing himself, we decided to just let him tell his own story.
How did you decide what to show and what not? The biggest challenge was getting it all in. The first cut we had was seven hours long and the second was five hours long. We got it down to two hours which I thought was great but we still had to lose another 15 minutes to get a release.
‘HE WAS SO BRILLIANT AT EXPRESSING HIMSELF, WE DECIDED TO JUST LET HIM TELL HIS OWN STORY’
Did that mean you had to leave a lot of his story untold? We had to find scenes that were exciting but that also told us something about Senna’s character because we wanted the film to have a classic three-act structure, the hero’s journey. But we had to tell this story with footage that already existed. It was almost like a detective story as we hunted for footage in Japan, Sao Paulo and Italy. Senna’s still worshipped in the F1 paddock – Lewis Hamilton wears a yellow helmet in tribute. What made him so influential? As a racing driver he had the most essential values – he was the best, he was the fastest, he won the World Championship, he did it leading from the front and he would take on anyone. He
‘HE WAS SPECIAL, HE HAD THE WEIGHT OF EXPECTATION OF 200 MILLION BRAZILIANS ON HIS SHOULDERS.’
was like, ‘I’m coming through. If you don’t get out of the way we’re going to have an accident, so you may as well get out of the way.’ The other side is the caring side; the man who cared about the other drivers’ safety. He was always arguing with [the FIA head] Jean-Marie Balestre about safety. I’ve seen footage where he’s arguing for the safety of young drivers minutes before a big grand prix. He was special, he had the weight of expectation of 200 million Brazilians on his shoulders. He meant a lot to so many people and all these layers come together to make him really interesting and special. What do you think is Senna’s most enduring legacy? I think safety is the big one. I think if it had just been Roland Ratzenburger who had died [in Imola in 1994] I don’t know if anything would have changed. But the fact that Senna also died and he died not because he made a mistake but because something went wrong, that’s when people realised that things had to change. So the cars changed, the helmets changed, the tracks changed, everything changed. Professor Sid Watkins, Senna’s best friend, had to make all these changes. That’s his biggest legacy because, touch wood, no drivers have died since.
Is it also true that Senna’s influence transcended sport? He helped to change the perception of Brazil. Now it’s a powerful nation with the World Cup and the Olympics coming up, but at that point they were in a bad way, having just come out of a dictatorship. He gave them hope. I think the inspiration he gave to Brazilians is what we’ve tried to capture in our film, people who previously have never heard of Senna come out of the film a little bit in love with him. In the film, Senna is depicted as being something of a lone wolf. How far did Ayrton need other people around him? When he came in, he felt himself to be a bit of an outsider – he was taking on a French establishment. You see that in his first Monaco Grand Prix against a Frenchman [Alain Prost]. By the time we get to him being a triple-world champion and being friends with Gerhard Berger, he was the establishment: he was the one everybody looked up to. But Berger taught him to laugh, taught him to lighten up a bit because Senna was always so intense. By the time we got to 1994 and Imola, he’s the best driver in the best car and that’s his journey.
REVIEW Tim Robery, Telegraph
Senna begins quietly, without foreshadowing or bombast, or Icarus analogies, or talking heads. There’s only aural commentary from those who knew Ayrton Senna, the magically confident Brazilian Formula 1 driver who arrived on the scene in 1984. His rise was meteoric, but this great documentary stays grounded, following his career path with steady introspection, race by race, season by season. There’s no way Asif Kapadia’s movie could fail to satisfy racing fans, particularly those who remember the heady days of Senna’s ascendancy. The narrative is just too strong, particularly the clash of sensibilities with his great rival Alain Prost, ice to Senna’s fire; the cockpit footage through chicanes and dog-legs, much of it previously unseen, puts us in each fraught moment. The shaping of Senna’s story is so methodical and contained that it achieves a mournful scope. Kapadia and the film’s writer, Manish Pandey, know that merely declaring how special their subject was is the stuff of ordinary hagiography. Instead, they set about proving it. Senna, as they present him to us, was a combustible mix: superficially fearless, yet racked by inner doubt. He soared above the sport’s politics on the track, but was mired in them so frequently off it that he sometimes considered
throwing in the towel. This wasn’t possible. He was a wizard in the rain, which came to his rescue in key races like a benediction from above. Kapadia and Pandey don’t belabour his faith, but nonetheless manage to make it integral to our understanding of the man. And every one of their interviewees, from McLaren boss Ron Dennis, to his sister Viviane, to Sid Watkins, the on-track medical chief who became his friend, reveals a vulnerable or quixotic side to his personality. Like all memorable sporting icons, Senna was a magnet for drama. His relationship with Prost fascinates, as much for the shifting body language, which could go from joshing to cutit-with-a-knife cold, as for their combative manoeuvrings to clinch races. He faced an even frostier nemesis in the shape of French FIA president Jean-Marie Balestre, with his Bond-villain glasses, odd finger-stabbings, and obstructive rulings, which came to be viewed by Senna as the stuff of vendetta. Kapadia navigates this with an impressively shrewd hold on tone, but the real test of his film’s mettle is the climax. Shattering in the gentlest way, edited with rare care, it’s an affirmation of all the bonds Senna forged in his life — with his family, colleagues, the people of Brazil. To emerge unmoved is just about inconceivable.
CREDITS Asif Kapadi Manish Pandey
Director Writer
Debra Hayward Eric Fellner James Gay-Rees Kevin Macdonald Liza Chasin Manish Pandey Tim Bevan Victoria Gregory
Executive Producer Producer Producer Executive Producer Executive Producer Executive Producer Producer Line Producer
Ayrton Senna Alain Prost Frank Williams Galv達o Bueno Gerhard Berger Jackie Stewart Jean-Marie Balestre Milton da Silva Neide Senna Nelson Piquet Nigel Mansell Reginaldo Leme Ron Dennis Sid Watkins Viviane Senna
AYRTON
Sheffield Documentary Festival