Senna (2010)

IMDb plot summary: A documentary on Brazilian Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna, who won the F1 world championship three times before his death at age 34.
Directed by Asif Kapadia.

Let me preface this by saying that sports movies are very much not my thing and I always have trouble ranking documentaries alongside other movies. Documentaries so often seem more like textbooks in visual form, rather than anything -- for lack of a better term -- artistic. So I went into this a little uncertain. And most of it does fall into a fairly dry cataloging of Ayrton Senna's accomplishments. Two things help it stand out for me, however. One is how it ends. I knew nothing about Senna, had no idea he died tragically in a racing accident at a young age, so seeing it follow him up to the very ending of his life was startling but also ultimately very moving. The clips of the people of Brazil talking about what he had meant to them as a popular figure were very touching. The other thing that I didn't necessarily notice at first but that really started hitting me when I thought about it, was how firmly the documentary stayed in the years it was talking about. All the footage came from those years in the 1980s and 1990s, with any after-the-fact commentary being provided solely in voiceover, and even then, there wasn't much of it. Most spoken comments came from then-current interviews or discussions. This had the effect of not feeling like someone is lecturing me about the past from the present, but really trying to recreate the sensation of being part of this world at this time. It's fairly effective -- just about as effective as an athlete's documentary bio can be for me, I think!

How it entered my Flickchart:
Senna > Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Senna < The Village
Senna < Death to Smoochy
Senna < Journey to the Center of the Earth
Senna > Adama
Senna > Once Upon a Time in the West
Senna > The Silver Chair
Senna > Neighbors
Senna > No eres tu, soy yo
Senna < The Good Dinosaur
Final spot: #1294 out of 2944.