Senna: Anti-establishment figure

Fans of Formula One got a real treat in the summer when 'Senna', the documentary about the life of three-times World Champion Ayrton Senna, earned a cinema release in the UK. It didn't stick around for long but the very fact the film made it to the multiplexes alongside the likes of 'Kung Fu Panda 2' in the first place is testament to the spell the Brazilian still casts more than 17 years after his death.

"It's the biggest UK documentary ever," the film's director Asif Kapadia says. That's not a boast: the 39-year-old Londoner seems surprised that 'Senna' has become such a hit. Further placing this unexpected turn of events into context, he adds that "it's the third biggest of all time in the UK, nearly the second biggest. It's right behind 'March of The Penguins'. The biggest is 'Fahrenheit 9/11'." That's Oscar-winning company, although Kapadia is more circumspect at the prospect of following Michael Moore down the red carpet when awards season comes around. "We'll have to see. Hopefully we'll be in the mix but we can't take anything for granted."

One reason for the success of 'Senna' is that it goes beyond a "competent TV sports doc" - the exact words US critic Roger Ebert used in a rather sniffy review of the film. ("I don't think he got it," its maker responds. "I think he was in a mood that day.") According to Kapadia "the challenge was to somehow make the film work for people who can't stand sport. The idea of someone going (mimics the sound of an F1 car) round a track for two hours in a giant cigarette packet, that would be like hell on earth for them. Somehow we had to appeal to them as well as the fans of Sky Sports, the people who have the radio on constantly in the car and who want to know every single thing that's going on in the world of sport."

Fortunately for Kapadia and writer Manish Pandey, their task was helped by the charisma of the film's subject. It picks up the thread in the late 1970s when the then Ayrton da Silva first arrived in Europe to race karts before jumping to his F1 debut in 1984. Senna made his first splash - literally - at that year's Monaco Grand Prix when, in appalling weather conditions, he almost beat the more established, but still rising, star Alain Prost.

All sports need rivalries and looking back at that period of F1, Senna v Prost is the feud that springs to mind. Little wonder, then, that it is central to the film. "It's like Borg v McEnroe and Ali v Frazier because he and Prost were so different as people, as characters," Kapadia says. "Their style of racing was very different; their personalities were very different."

In short, Prost, known as 'The Professor', played the percentage game. Arriving in F1 four seasons before Senna, the Frenchman had already seen enough of what was then still a perilous sport to opt for self-preservation; to reap the most reward for the least possible risk. Prost's talent was such that he eventually won four world titles, all the while appearing to drive as if he was on his way to B&Q.

Senna, in contrast, appeared an intense young man in a hurry. An explosive mix was created in 1988 when, as Kapadia puts it, the "curious nature of Formula One" brought these two opposites together as team-mates at McLaren. The film shows early attempts at bonhomie in the camp; they seem forced, contrived. It wasn't to last: by the following season they were crashing into each other.

This being Formula One, politics was never far away. After Senna's near miss at Monaco, there were chunterings that the decision to wave the chequered flag early - just as the newcomer was shaping up to pass Prost - was not taken simply because of the pelting rain. The film emphasises Prost's closeness to fellow Frenchman Jean Marie-Balestre, then president of F1's France-based FIA governing body, and echoes Senna's belief that his exclusion from the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix, in which he and Prost collided whilst racing for the title, was a deliberate conspiracy.

Prost won the title as a result but lost it to Senna 12 months later when, again at Suzuka, the Brazilian saw fit to deliberately ram into his rival at the first corner. These two episodes mark the highpoint - or lowpoint - of the feud and the film gives a compelling insight into the deep sense of grievance Senna felt. Its masterstroke, though, comes in its use of previously unseen footage of pre-race drivers' meetings, in which Senna is seen locking horns with the autocratic Balestre.

"That's the stuff that's come from Bernie Ecclestone's archive which, once we started to look into it, we just couldn't believe there was a camera there," Kapadia explains. "We couldn't believe there was somebody there filming all of this. Seeing him passionately arguing with Jean-Marie Balestre, suddenly it makes this guy come to life. And then you realise why he's so special, because before a world championship this guy would be arguing for what he believes in. All the way through, he would refuse to kow-tow.

"He was always a bit of an outsider, an anti-establishment-type figure. And that's what makes him so endearing and so powerful and like a movie star really."

Except that most movies have a happy ending. Kapadia admits he had little knowledge of F1 prior to making the film, yet even he remembers where he was on the afternoon of Sunday, May 1 1994 when Senna's Williams car left the Imola circuit on the Tamburello curve and hit a concrete wall. Thankfully his death remains the last in F1; not that the passing years have eased the pain for his family.

"It was very tough for them," Kapadia says. "They're all still in mourning, I have to say. It's really a very, very emotional experience watching it with the family. Even when he was winning, people were crying in the screening room - you could hear everyone sobbing. And at the end, there's a lot of footage at Imola that they will never have seen before."

As anyone who remembers Senna's funeral - his coffin carried on a fire truck through the streets of his native Sao Paulo - will recall, a nation also mourned. His relationship with the Brazilian people is also explored, as is his faith, something Prost once claimed his rival thought would spare him on the track. They achieved a rapprochement of sorts before Senna's death and Prost served as a pallbearer. Interviews with him feature, although Kapadia says "he hasn't seen the film. He said: 'I haven't seen it and I don't want to see it'."

A casualty of Kapadia's desire to portray the man as well as the sportsman is footage of the latter doing what he did best. For example, we get to see Senna win his home grand prix in 1991 - a victory achieved in spite of his car getting stuck in sixth gear - but not his victory at Donington Park two years later when, again in wet conditions, he ran rings around the opposition. Damon Hill, driving a Williams far superior to Senna's McLaren, finished second almost a minute and a half behind. Prost, also in a Williams, was a lapped third.

"If there is a criticism from fans, it's that the film's not long enough because they want more. They want this, they want that. They want Donington: why isn't Donington in there? All these things that people have read about or seen on YouTube, and so my aim was to tell the story the best way we could but not just re-hash everything people already knew; to show new things and to try and tell the story in a dramatic way," Kapadia explains.

"Brazil 1991 is not a race where I've heard people say 'It's his greatest race' but for me it's my favourite bit in the movie, because of the emotion you get at the end of the race. Because he's not even fighting anyone else; he's fighting the car, because everyone said it's impossible for him to drive the car in sixth gear."

The scenes Kapadia describes - of an exhausted Senna barely able to raise the winner's trophy in front of an adoring crowd having been lifted from his car - provide the movie star ending. "There's something about him," the director muses. "An amazing sportsperson."

'Senna' is released on DVD on Monday.