You might think one big difference between the biopic and the documentary life is that in the latter all the characters are allowed to play themselves, and that when they die, we see their actual friends and parents weeping. You wouldn’t be wrong to think this, and after the title-figure of Asif Kapadia’s Senna has failed to survive a high-speed crash into a barrier at Imola in the San Marino Grand Prix, the whole of Brazil is seen weeping along with his intimates, in footage that in several ways contradicts the complex image we have been shown of the man. There is no mistaking what has happened for these grieving crowds: a god has died.

LRB 14 July 2011 | PDF Download