Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 29 July

Senna (Kapadia, 2010)

In the absence of a timely film fest­iv­al guide, I thought I would go back through pre­vi­ous pre­views and see if there was any­thing from pre­vi­ous years that would fit the bill.

As is often the case, many con­tenders simply aren’t avail­able to stream in New Zealand. AroVision con­tin­ues to fight the good fight and, if you are look­ing for some­thing good-but-forgotten, I recom­mend David Zellner’s 2014 oddity Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter which you can rent from them. A Fargo-obsessed Japanese woman searches snowy Minnesota for a bur­ied suit­case full of money.

I inter­viewed Zellner for the Rancho Notorious pod­cast pri­or to the 2014 fest­iv­al and an excel­lent con­ver­sa­tion it was.

I recom­men­ded Asif Kapadia’s superb doc­u­ment­ary Senna in the 2011 fest­iv­al pre­view1 and then gave it a few more words when it was released to cinemas in September that year:

Despite my pos­it­ive review for TT3D last week, I’m not a huge motor­s­port fan. In 1996 I worked on the last Nissan Mobil 500 race around the water­front and couldn’t see the appeal of watch­ing cars go belt­ing around the same corner over and over again. In that race you couldn’t even tell who was win­ning, it was all such a blur. In fact, the only time I’ve ever watched Formula 1 was when I chan­nel surfed on to some late night cov­er­age one Sunday night in 1994 just before going to bed. Two corners (about 30 seconds) later, Ayrton Senna was dead. It was pretty freaky, let me tell you.

So, I knew (as all audi­ences must) that Asif Kapadia’s bril­liant doc­u­ment­ary Senna was going to end in tragedy. What I didn’t know was how riv­et­ing it was going to be from begin­ning to end. Senna works because it is first and fore­most a por­trait of a com­pel­ling char­ac­ter – a cha­ris­mat­ic, con­fid­ent but humble young man who under­stood the risks he took and fought to bal­ance those risks with his innate desire to race and race hard – but when the polit­ics of Formula 1 took the con­trol of those risks out of his hands you could see there was only going to be one result.

Using only archive foot­age, with no nar­rat­or and no talk­ing heads – the story is told through audio inter­views with many of the char­ac­ters – Senna is exem­plary doc­u­ment­ary storytelling and one of the very best films of the year.

Also in that 2011 Capital Times column: Joe Wright’s thrill­er Hanna, the restored Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tale, Final Destination 5 and Italian mys­tery The Double Hour.

Where to watch Senna

Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India, USA, UK: Streaming on Netflix2