'Senna' Netflix Review: A Tepid And Shallow Portrayal Of The Legendary Brazilian Racing Driver

Patrick Willems has ruined biographical movies and shows for me. Well, to be honest, he was talking about musical biopics in his video, and I am using the word “ruined” jokingly because that video helped me view biopics in a totally different fashion. The crux of Patrick’s thesis was that the reverence with which the subject of a biopic is usually treated is tepid, formulaic, and hence, boring. Now, if you don’t know a lot about the person in question, you don’t care about the filmmaking and storytelling of a biopic because you’re too busy gathering information. However, due to the evolution of the internet, knowledge is at your fingertips. So, when you’re not watching a biopic for the info, the shortcomings in the filmmaking and storytelling become obvious. Ever since I learned this, biographical dramas have become the least interesting thing in the world of entertainment for me because I just can’t see past the beat-by-beat retelling of a person’s history. And it’s really unfortunate that the late, great Ayrton Senna’s life story has become a victim of this trend.

Usually, I use this section of a review to give a brief summary of the plot of a movie or a show while avoiding spoilers and any other important details. In the case of Senna, I don’t know what to say without sounding like the racer’s Wikipedia page because the miniseries is a glorified version of that very article. The only part of the page that the Netflix series has left out is Ayrton’s birth. Other than that, it’s a beat-for-beat retelling of his historical account. And that naturally begs the question: What’s the point of making this miniseries? It’s not like Ayrton is a really obscure figure in the history of racing or history in general. I told my parents that Netflix has made a miniseries on the guy, and they instantly recalled his achievements and his tragic demise. My parents and I are Indian, and we’ve never stepped foot in Brazil, and yet we know about him. So, you can only imagine how popular he is in South America or any country with a culture of racing. Every modern racer in existence is alive and driving safely on the racetrack because the deaths of Ayrton and Ronald Ratzenberger reinstated the drivers’ trade union, thereby leading to a change in the FIA’s rules that were detrimental to the art of racing. Therefore, unlike something like The Waiting Game, which showed how young basketball players are ignorant about the ABA, I don’t think this miniseries is educating established or up-and-coming racers and their fans.

Senna’s dedication to retelling every detail of the titular racer’s life actually causes a major problem: Ayrton, the fictionalized version in the miniseries, comes off as a really shallow individual. I know this may sound reductive, but throughout the show, the man is either increasing the level of his determination to win the next race or he is bedding the most beautiful girl in the room. I’m sure that in real life Ayrton must’ve done all that, but I’m also sure that that’s not all that he did. The writers of the miniseries either didn’t have the permission to show the flaws in his character that can’t be repackaged as attributes, or they simply lacked the skill to present the layers of Ayrton’s persona in an organic fashion. That’s why every time the miniseries isn’t copying and pasting from the books and articles that have been written about him, they’re just resorting to the most sanitized clichés imaginable while constantly saying that the man’s only real flaw was that he wanted to be the best. I think I would’ve tolerated this repetitive and mind-numbing storytelling if this was a film. However, 6 hours of just that gave me a headache and made me livid. I genuinely had to sit for a while and separate the real-life Ayrton from the one conjured by Netflix so that I didn’t end up projecting my feelings about the show onto the legend.

Senna is clearly a very expensive miniseries. For starters, it has a customized Tudum opening logo, and Netflix only does this for tentpole projects like Rebel Moon, Maestro, Stranger Things, The Witcher, 3 Body Problem, and Bridgerton. It’s a period piece, so clearly a lot of money has been spent on the production design, costume design, and hair and make-up. The show features real racing cars (that too from various eras), racing venues, and real names of companies and brands, and employs truckloads of VFX, SFX, and CGI to put the audience in the cockpit, and that requires an unimaginable amount of money. On top of that, it uses the real names of the people who were associated with Ayrton in some way or other. So, I guess the producers had to pay them too to give the show a sense of authenticity. Also, the miniseries has a massive cast of very talented actors, thereby adding to that budget. Unfortunately, due to the bland cinematography, editing, and pacing, all of these understandably great elements become irrelevant as you keep looking at the progress bar on the streaming platform to see if you are close to the end. At that exact moment, you are overwhelmed with this crushing sense of guilt that you are looking at the progress bar instead of being engrossed by Ayrton’s biopic (because it’s that boring). Or maybe that’s just me, and everyone else is going to be busy wiping their tears instead of being bogged down by the death of the biopic subgenre.

In closing, all I want to say is that, please, stop making biographical dramas like Senna. People as legendary as Ayrton deserve better storytelling than this overpriced garbage. Now, here’s a list of biopics that I do like. Since we’re on the topic of racing, I have to mention Ford v Ferrari and Rush. Staying on the topic of sports, I think Dangal, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, and 42 are brilliant. Given how I began this review by talking about musical biopics, I have to mention Elvis, Rocketman, and tick, tick… BOOM! Then there are movies like Schindler’s List, Spotlight, Dog Day Afternoon, The Aviator, Jarhead, Tetris, Only the Brave, First Man, Serpico, Spencer, Judas and the Black Messiah, and Dolemite Is My Name. Documentaries like The Sparks Brothers, For Sama, Life Itself, and While We Watched are excellent choices. And it’ll be wrong of me to not mention The Social Network in a paragraph of biopics because it’s the most relevant and ominous biopic ever made. So, yes, take your pick from any of these recommendations. If you choose to ignore them and watch Senna, well, I wish you all the best.