Watched it last night with a friend. It turns out the local PCA had a group outing so the parking lot was full of Porsches. While I am a Porsche owner/fan, the PCA crowd usually gets on my nerves, but they didn't last night and had a good talk with one in the parking lot after the movie.
I liked the movie. It maybe didn't quite live up to my high expectations, but it was very good. It is geared toward die-hard fans as there is little explanation as to what F1 is about and many details are left unsaid. It might be a bit hard for an uninitiated view to get all of the nuances as to what was going on at the time and who the people involved are. Generally the only time a label would show up to name someone would be if they were talking. Many others who are recognizable to F1 fans were shown, but with no indication as to who they were. It was interesting to see them as younger individuals in a different era. Overall, they let the footage speak for itself and while there is some voice over narration, they don't show on screen as "talking heads". All images are footage from that time period. Even then, much of what is said is in Senna's (and others such as Prost and Balestre) own words from the footage from that era.
They seem to focus more on behind the scenes and commentary from friends and family about the more private side of Senna which may not be as well known. It was very interesting to see footage that I had no idea existed of things like drivers meetings at pivotal races, etc. There was also a good bit of family movies including some stuff from before Senna became famous. I think they tended to paint Alan Prost as a "bad guy" and really got into the entire political aspect of Prost and then FIA president Balestre (both Prost and Balestre are French) and how Balestre manipulated things to help his countryman Prost. But as much as I love Senna, they didn't mention any of this own questionable actions (other than the drama at Suzuka in 89 and 90). Overall, I would say that the key message of the movie was how Senna enjoyed "pure" racing and that while he learned to live with the politics and money of F1, his real love was racing. How he had placed huge pressure on himself to win a world championship. How his first win in Brazil GP meant so much to him. How he became more relaxed after he had proven himself. How he was driven to continue to win. There is an interesting moment at the end in which they ask him at a press conference as to who he enjoyed racing against the most. I will not ruin that moment for anyone who has not yet seen the movie.
While I am a fan, I am not as up on the history as some others and I read on a forum elsewhere that the movie producers/director took some liberties with some of the footage. For example there is one scene that shows what you are lead to believe is in-car footage of Senna from the 1988 Monaco GP when Senna crashed out while in the lead (they don't show the crash in-car just someone in a McLaren hammering around Monaco). I have heard that no in-car footage exists of Senna from the race itself. Maybe the footage was from practice or qualifying or maybe even a different year?. And some of the sound editing is not up to par as there are a few places in which the sound does not match what is happening on the screen (i.e. hard on the throttle accelerating while car is braking for a low speed turn). I suspect that some footage didn't have any associated sound, or the sound was not of good quality so they pieced together stuff.
Lastly, they do a pretty good job of showing what happened in 1994 at the San Marino GP. They touch upon, but don't delve too deeply into what the cause was (plenty of tin foil hat types involved in that) and focus more on the impact of his death. There is zero mention of the eventual witch hunt at Williams led by Italian prosecutors.
I stumbled upon the article linked below a few months ago and found it to be quite good. It basically chronicles the last 96 hours of Senna's life. It goes into much more detail than the movie does and talks a great deal about Senna's apparent state of mind that weekend and how close he came to not racing that Sunday...
http://www.forix.com/8w/senna1994.html_________________
Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.comMoney can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.
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