If you go into the documentary Senna, about the late Formula One champion Ayrton Senna, directed
by Asif Kapadia and written by Manish Pandey, with a blank slate as I did, you
are likely to come away knowing more about this energetic and emotional young man
than you could ever have learned from a book or series of articles about him.
The only thing I knew about Senna before was that he was
from Brazil and that he died in the race car. I had no idea how old he was, how
long he’d been racing before the accident, how many championships he’d won, or
who his rivals were. Kapadia apparently did mountains of work combing through
news and stock footage to be able to complete a total portrait of Senna’s
Formula One career. He fills an hour and forty-five minutes of screen time
without ever cutting away to a talking head. Every interviewed friend, family
member, or colleague is presented in voiceover while we are treated to racing
or practice footage, or those telltale ‘behind-the-scenes’ moments that reveal
Senna’s emotions pre- or post-race.
