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Critics Consensus: Even for filmgoers who aren't racing fans, Senna offers heart-pounding thrills -- and heartbreaking emotion.
Critic Consensus: Even for filmgoers who aren't racing fans, Senna offers heart-pounding thrills -- and heartbreaking emotion.
All Critics (118) | Top Critics (34) | Fresh (109) | Rotten (9) | DVD (1)
Captivating, chilling, and surprisingly sublime.
"Senna" is simply the greatest sports film I have ever seen.
A psychologically intriguing if at times too hagiographic portrait of a man who often held pole position in his profession and felt nearer to God because of it.
"Senna" is carefully edited and makes sometimes spectacular use of extensive home movies and videos.
You don't have to know anything about car racing at all. Instead, you simply have to like a great story, one that has all the elements: drama, inspiration, competition, victory, defeat, betrayal and, looming above it all, tragedy.
It's stripped of narration, talking heads, and anything else that might threaten to slow it down.
This is not just a good film - it's a great film: fascinating, exciting, nerve-wracking and profoundly moving.
Kapadia's film isn't just a moving resurrection of the driver and his phenomenal career; it's a timely nod to our increasingly competitive times, as we attempt to restart from a long stall of selfishness, and reconstruct the engine of meaning in the pits.
An engrossing, nerve-wracking and beautifully crafted examination of a sporting hero, Kapadia's documentary is a must-see.
[Director Asif Kapadia] allows his documentary gaze to fall upon the sport of motor-racing in this thrilling exploration into the life of a man who aimed to do as much for those less fortunate as he than he did for the sport.
No, NASCAR coverage on TV never looks as good as this.
...a surprisingly deft examination of the power of faith...
An enthralling and heartbreaking documentary using only archive material and old interviews with the pilot and those who knew him, and it is fascinating to see the human side of an admirable man who was the greatest idol of a nation facing a major economical and political crisis back then.
Super Reviewer
An arresting, incredibly well constructed documentary on the life of Ayrton Senna, a Formula One race car driver during the 80's and early 90's whose dominance of the sport is largely unknown by the common sports fan. Senna is such a lovable person and you can see why his home country of Brazil rallied around him and treated him like a god, because of his humble nature and intense spiritual belief in God that made him such a riveting public figure. If you know his story already, you know it has a tragic ending attached to it, and the way this is handled is extremely moving and heartbreaking. Quite simply, this is not just a fantastic documentary, but also one of the greatest sports movies ever made.
This film, about Formula One racing, is probably one of the best put together and archived documentary films ever. It speaks about the complete life story of Ayrton Senna, who was a competitive underdog, being from South America and winning his races on skill instead of relying on money like many of his competitors. Besides simply being about the legendary driver it is also about the pride he brought to his home country, about the spectacle of winning, and his own happiness and self-satisfaction when he won. The entire film is taken from archival footage, and though there are some interviews with his family, friends, and other racers, they are never shown onscreen. Everything we actually see is from either home movies or the race track. Senna was a very passionate and interesting man as well as a significantly good race car driver, and without a doubt the footage captures all of that and more. There's also no real commentary from a narrator, which is seriously refreshing. Everything that you can truly take away from the film comes inherently from your own sense of what truly happened. This is very true when it comes to Senna's rivalry with fellow driver Alain Prost. Prost was from a much richer driving team and both men were obvious enemies, whether it came from ratting on one another to keep each other off the track, or simply using mind games in order to win for themselves. Senna comes off with a lot of honor, and seemed to seriously care for the well-being and safety of all the other drivers, while Prost only seemed to care about winning. That may not be true about Prost, but it is true that Senna asked for safety conditions that weren't met and that ended negatively, to his detriment. That last part of the documentary, when Senna was willing to do anything to win and yet he was going against the adversaries of the commission, that showed the true nature of his character, and how great an athlete he really was.
Senna is a documentary based around the career of Ayrton Senna, regarded by many as the greatest racing driver who ever lived. It is very much based around his exploits on the track, his private life getting little in the way of screen time, but I suspect that this is a true reflection of an obsessive perfectionist and competitor who lived for his art. My interest in motor racing can best be described as "passing" as I find F1 today a sport in which robots are driven by robots, but the drama provided by the intense and bitter rivalry between Senna and Prost and the interaction between the men and their machines is in sharp contrast to what the sport has become in the wake of Senna's death. There's some thrilling in car footage of the man in action and I personally would have preferred to see a little more of the races themselves but it's an interesting and intelligent insight into the career of a man who epitomised his sport.
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