When growing up I wasn’t big on watching sports and rather played them myself. I might occasionally watch some tennis or turn on the TV when the national team was playing football, but that was about it. Except for Formula 1. During the nineties I wouldn’t miss any of it. On Sundays I would watch it on the TV I had in my room and would love all the excitement a race would bring. It was the age of drivers like Senna, Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher. The rivalries (especially between Hill and Schumacher) are something I’ll never forgot (and one of the reasons I have never been a fan of Schumacher despite him getting the world title several times). As I grew older and moved out of my parents house I wasn’t as interested in the sport anymore. I might occasionally watch a race, but the sport lost a lot of its excitement for me. Documentaries about the sport always interest me and as 2010’s Senna proved, they can be very good. The question is if 1 can match the level set by that documentary.
The documentary focusses on safety and shows a crash by Martin Brundle in 1996. If you have never seen the footage you will be shocked and would swear Brundle couldn’t have possibly survived it, but when he walks away unscathed, quickly running towards his backup car. It’s unbelievable, but as this documentary shows the sport was extremely dangerous. Safety was something nobody would think about. Formula 1 race drivers were real men, not afraid of danger and knowing the risks they were running. 1 makes clear this attitude has meant a lot of lives lost in various accidents, some which could have been prevented had safety been a priority. A lot of former and current race drivers are interviewed (including Damon Hill, Nigell Mansell, Jackie Ickx, Nikki Lauda and many others) and those who lived through the dangerous times tell what they experienced.
Although I really enjoyed seeing a lot of old footage of Formula 1 and the various interviews, this documentary never felt truly engaging. The focus is so much on the safety aspect that I thought the personal stories were more in the background. The message the documentary brought was clear: F1 racing used to be really dangerous and now it is quite safe. I wished more time was spent with the drivers talking, the impact specific situations had on them. Nikki Lauda’s accident is one of the most well-known crashes, but he doesn’t appear much. I’m sure that the true F1 fan will enjoy watching the documentary, but those who don’t care much for the sport will not be moved as much as the documentary Senna did. Even Michael Fassbender’s narration can’t change that.
Thanks for writing this. I hadn’t heard of the documentary and would be interesting in seeing it.
I was one of those people who didn’t care much for F1 and probably did hear Senna’s death announced but didn’t think twice about it. ‘Another racing driver killed,’ I must have thought.
Now that I’ve gotten into DTM and F1, I feel crushed that I had never known of the man while he was still alive. The Senna documentary broke my heart. “Rush” made me wish I could have met Hunt and seen him together with Lauda. It was a terribly dangerous time for drivers, which strikes me as amazing seeing as that the 90s weren’t particularly lacking in technology that the cars couldn’t be safe.
I’ll let you know what I think of it. Hope it comes out here soon.
Thanks Fumi, it is interesting to watch and it does give a quick overview of the history so I’m sure you will enjoy it quite a bit. I remember Senna’s accident and waiting in front of the television…it felt like a long day. Still have not been able to check out Rush myself. I guess it is worth checking out?
I really enjoyed “Rush” only because afterwards, I saw interviews with Hunt and Lauda and thought what a fantastic job those two actors did. The accent was spot on and it was a touching sort of buddy movie. In fast cars.
I watched “Rush” before I watched “Senna” and it was a little surreal to see Lauda in actual shots during “Senna” and hearing Hunt commentate on Monaco when Senna was racing.
Ah, these movies have managed to fuel the fire 🙂
Pingback: The Crash Reel (2013) | De Filmkijker