There have been films that have touched me,
left a marked impression and encouraged me to probe deeper into issues and my
feelings towards them. To me, this is a stamp of incredible film-making. If you
can carry a piece of cinema with you long after the credits have rolled, in
this age of forgettable storytelling, you have achieved quite a feat. Senna does this.
I watched it twice within a matter of days,
at the recommendation of a friend whose praise was so ridiculously high that I
almost did it more to appease her than satisfy my own curiosity. I’ve always
nursed a vague interest in Formula One. This comes from my days working Sundays
at an old man’s pub in a neighbouring little village during one summer holiday
from university. One of the regulars was an engineer and used to take great
delight in explaining some of the finer details of the cars to me. Almost all
of it went straight over my head, but I found a respect for the crafting and
construction of the machines themselves.
When I think back, that is what I always liked about racing; the
technical aspect, the innovations, the amazing engineering. I can safely say I
never once thought about the ability or mindset of a Formula One driver. More
the fool, me.
Enter stage left, Senna. I almost feel stupid for not having paid much attention to
the name before, and for not realising the impact that his name alone has, both
in sport and outside of it. The documentary itself is verging on flawless. It is
brilliantly constructed, superbly edited and utterly compelling from the
outset. An outpouring of adjectives, but justly so. The story, charting Senna’s
rise to the top of F1, his bitter rivalry with one-time teammate Alain Prost to
his ultimate death in Imola, is paced just right. There are no tangents or talking
heads to distract the audience from the man himself and what he achieves on,
and off, the track. The racing scenes, intercutting television archive footage
and film taken from cameras on the cars themselves, are transporting. It is an
extremely effective editing technique, setting the perfect sense of tone and
pace, and creating insurmountable tension at the appropriate moment. And, of
course, it’s the fact it is all real
that really makes it pitch-perfect.
But all of this is serving a purpose, and
that purpose is to highlight the fascinating scope of its subject. Senna is
dedicated to the point of reckless, motivated by a desire to win that is
verging on self-destructive, spiritual to an extent that his peers believe him
to consider himself immortal. More than anything else, this is a film about a human
being. There have been criticisms of Senna that suggest it doesn’t transcend
much beyond a deftly-edited sports documentary or a well-rounded biography, and
that it verges on voyeurism and hagiography. I think that perhaps these
particular reviewers are maybe missing the point. What makes Senna work so brilliantly,
in my humble opinion, is the attempt to truly try and understand this man. His
dedication to his profession is resolute, and totally transparent. There are
references to his desire to be the best, to win; underpinned by flashes of the
lengths he will go to to do so. Yet, he is conflicted, constantly reminded of
man’s own mortality and the ambiguous relationship this has with the very nature
of motor racing. It is a portrait of an extremely complex man, whose compassion
and success made him for somewhat of a national idol in his native Brazil. Senna
himself borders on the edge of paradox; on one hand, here is a man who oozes
humanity, who will risk his life mid-race at the scene of a crash to help an
injured driver; on the other, here is a man who knows no bounds, who will force
collisions and place those around him in jeopardy, in order to win. It is
almost mystifying how one person’s values and beliefs can clash with such intensity.
For me, the real impact of Senna is Senna himself. I found that
racing took on this new philosophical level for me that I didn’t really know to
be possible. I had never looked at it from that angle before, never paid it any
consideration at all really, until this film. That these men have a certain
connection with their own mortality on a day-to-day basis is sort of staggering
in my eyes. Then, when you try to place it into some context and realise that
this relationship centres upon a basic, competitive desire to be the best –
that is when the whole concept transforms into something else entirely. These
are men who face death for the thrill, the enjoyment, the adrenaline. But they
also do it to win. To beat everybody else. This is what separates them from
bungee-jumpers, sky-divers, white-water rafters, other adrenaline junkies. Ayrton
Senna once said "By being a racing driver you are under risk all
the time. By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing
driver because we are competing, we are competing to win. And the main motivation to all of us
is to compete for victory, it's not to come 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th." The notion that in order to be a true
competitor you must flirt with danger and put yourself on the knife edge is
enthralling, yet startling. Racers are a different breed. They know the risks,
become the closest spectators to crashes, injuries and deaths, accept it and
carry on regardless.
There is a video I came across while I was
trying to find out more about the mentality of the drivers which moved me to
tears. It is the footage of the 1973 Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort, which shows
a frantic David Purley witness Roger Williamson’s car crash, skid along the circuit
and burst into flames. He stops his car, runs across the track and tries to flip
the burning vehicle before grabbing a fire extinguisher from a nearby fireman
and attempts to the put out the blaze. He is almost frenzied in his efforts,
clearly exasperated by the lack of help he is getting from the stewards and
race personnel, who have nothing to protect them from the flames. It is not
until the end of the recording, when his efforts prove futile and he is led
away, that the desperation of the moment truly hits you. Purley is distraught,
fuelled by anger in this moment, this one moment when nothing was done. A man’s
life was lost and drivers were not stopping, fire engines were not racing to
the scene, communication had broken down. It is gut-wrenching. People may say
that it is ‘instinct’ to react in the same way in that moment, that ‘anybody
would do the same’, but that footage shows a remarkable man embark on a
selfless act of valour alone, beaten by circumstance and a system unable to cope with the
destructiveness that can occur within the blink of an eye. And yet, did it stop
David Purley from racing? I doubt I even need to provide the answer.
“Drivers rarely
talk about this aspect of the sport but, when they do, they generally speak of
an ability to shut the possibilities from their minds, a refusal to think of
the consequences of a serious shunt. And that is a gift given only to the
young. As one gets older, one's own mortality forces its way into the conscious
mind and racing becomes more of a balance between the risks and the enjoyment.
That is the point at which thoughts of retirement from F1 begin to occur.”
This observation is particularly interesting
to me, mostly due to the reference of ‘shutting the possibilities from their
minds’. There is a lot of talk of mental strength in sport, but I would argue
that such a high level of focus is not necessary in most sports professions.
That said, I am not a sportsperson, so am ill-equipped to make an informed
comment, but the concentration required from a racing driver seems to eclipse
most other high-profile examples I can think of. I was having a conversation
with a friend recently about F1 in which he likened the intense focus of the
mind during a race to that essential to the fundamental ability to meditate. To
paraphrase somewhat, he said drivers must block out all other thought and concentrate
solely on the present. Thought of the future is limited to the immediate; what manoeuvre
they must subsequently make, which corner on the circuit is next, how to
overtake the driver in front. Everything else must be blocked from the mind,
including fear, anxiety, self-consciousness and anger. Sometimes you can see it
happening. Drivers let outside forces enter their minds and a mistake is made,
the race can be lost, and sometimes, the faltering grip they have on the present
leads them to crash.
“For a racing driver to gear his mind up to
the level of concentration where his instinctive reactions can be relied upon
totally can be quite a stressful process of preparation, involving purging the
mind of all extraneous considerations. Outside influences are not welcome
during this period. As five-times World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio observed:
'A driver gets very tense when someone comes to talk to him before a race. That
is a time when one prefers to be alone, to think, and to be calm and collected.’”
“The moment you pass the chequered flag boom!
- your mind goes down. You're just holding your mind, holding it, holding it,
to the chequered flag. Then it falls to the ground. At Francorchamps this year,
where we all had to go through the stress of three starts, when I saw the red
flag come out for the second time, I had to suppress a desire to jump out of
the car and walk away for the rest of the afternoon. It can be that intense!” – Senna
The psychology of a racing driver is
absolutely fascinating, but also relatively difficult to comprehend properly.
Having never experienced it, you find yourself relying on the testimony of the
drivers themselves, who seem fairly reluctant to fully discuss it. Senna is one of the few drivers who seemed willing to express himself honestly, and talked frequently about his faith and spirtuality. I found a
few articles connecting to ‘flow’ which, according to Wikipedia, which is obviously
always right, is ‘the mental state of operation in which a person in an
activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement
and success in the process of the activity’. Wikipedia includes Senna as one of
its examples;
"I was already on pole, [...] and I just kept going.
Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team
mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving
the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a
different dimension. I felt as though I was driving in a tunnel. The whole
circuit became a tunnel... I had reached such a high level of concentration
that it was as if the car and I had become one. Together we were at the
maximum. I was giving the car everything - and vice versa."
I suppose this is why all of
this ended up having such a profound impact on me. Like I said, it takes
something truly remarkable to not so much alter your way of thinking, but to
really enhance it in some way. I found that Senna triggered a completely
different level of understanding about racing, and my perception of the sport
is now entirely different. I have a level of respect and awe for it that never
really existed in me before. The name Ayrton Senna now comes with all of the
connotations that it has for so many other people, and not because the film was
biased or promoted an agenda, but because it prompted me to go off and do my
own research and thinking about the man. I don’t believe you need to be an avid
follower of Formula 1 to really connect with his state of mind and his
perceptions of competing and being the best person can be, both personally and
professionally. While obviously not perfect, he is an inspiring figure, and I’m
glad the film managed to really convey that. Just like Revolutionary Road,
Senna baffles me. But for entirely different reasons.
“We are made of emotions, we are all looking
for emotions, it's only a question of finding the way to experience them. There
are many different ways of experience them all. Perhaps one different thing,
only that, one particular thing that Formula One can provide you, is that you
know we are always expose to danger, danger of getting hurt, danger of dying."
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