SENNA On DemandFebruary 09, 2012
FilmBuff
On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: SENNA (FilmBuff).
SENNA
You never know what you’ll get with a sports documentary. Some are overlong and didactic, like HOOP DREAMS or Ken Burns’ BASEBALL. Some, like MURDERBALL and DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, take you inside an unknown enclave of sports esoterica. Bud Greenspan’s series of Olympic docs offer viewers dizzyingly close-up views of the danger and precision of elite sports. And Leon Gast’s WHEN WE WERE KINGS brought Ali’s charisma and danger to a new generation.
Where Asif Kapadia’s SENNA excels – pardon the pun – is in showing how one sportsman, Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, captivated and united his home country, even as he was derided by fellow drivers for his showmanship and selfishness on the track.
SENNA has all the hallmarks of a sports film, including an impossibly handsome, flawed hero at its center. Born of privilege outside Sao Paulo, Senna rose from go-cart racing to winning the F1 championship three times. Throughout his racing career, his fan base grew but he alienated his colleagues, none more so that Alain Prost, with whom Senna would have a rivalry that culminated in a controversial crash during the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix.
SENNA is comprised almost completely of existing footage, from home movies of the driver as a child to tape of his races from ESPN. Though it’s exhaustive, the lack of visual appeal of most of the film makes it a bit of a bore. Senna is a compelling character whose competitive drive made him both a champion and a renegade, but Kapadia’s film is pedestrian in its presentation. It feels like an old episode of WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS or something the network would throw on during a rain delay back in the day.
For race fans or anyone who thought he was kind of a dreamboat, SENNA is a winner. For everyone else, it’s a modestly informative doc that’s a painless lap around the track.
Chris Claro is a contributing writer to On Demand Weekly. He is a former Director of Promotion for Sundance Channel and now works as a writer, producer, and media educator. He is a regular contributor to dvdverdict.com and contributor to the Eyes and Ears section of huffingtonpost.com
SENNA (FilmBuff) is now on demand.
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