Though it rather daringly confines its visual trajectory to nothing but archival footage—most of which feature its hero, Brazilian racing superstar Ayrton Senna, traversing tracks the world round at dizzying speeds—it could hardly be said that Senna simply goes around in circles. Its narrative, which skims the surface of Senna’s personal life in favour of his professional one, is burnished down to its mythical contours, rendering Senna’s meteoric rise to World Champion and tragic death at 34 in a mid-race crack-up as an Icarus tale, not one of hubris exactly—Senna spoke with great humility about his gift and his sense of debt to the god who endowed him with it—but of a deep faith in speed and glory that transcends reason. One memorable interview clip finds Senna describing a major turning point in his career arriving when he found himself behind the wheel and feeling as though he was no longer conscious. But this yearning for ecstasy was balanced by a fierce intellect, one trained to make split-second risk assessments. Senna was a champion because he was ruthless on the track, and his record for accidents was nearly as exceptional as his winning streak. Some thought him reckless, but the thrill of his greatest feats are undeniable: he won the Brazil Grand Prix with his car stuck in sixth gear for multiple laps; his fingers had to be pried from the wheel afterward.
Senna the film, now available on DVD, directed by Asif Kapadia, edited by Chris King and Gregers Sall, and written by Manish Pandey, understands very well that adrenaline is key to its appeal, whether the audience is full of racing enthusiasts, those who crave a solid sports documentary, or those who are simply drawn to high-stakes stories of ambition. Things move fast, excitement accumulates, and we’re often treated to views of the action from Senna’s on-board camera. But it should be said that this need for speed ultimately obscures everything else, and the absence of talking heads makes it tough to distinguish between the various commentators we hear speaking almost constantly on the soundtrack. So by the time Senna is over, you might feel as though you missed a great deal in the blur.
Set in 1228 BC, Immortals tells the story of how a fierce peasant with an unlimited gym pass rose up against and ultimately defeated a sadistic warmonger with a lot of help from body-buttered Aryan deities. Apparently it’s all based on Greek myths, though departures from the source material are conspicuous and most often really dumb. One could argue that director Tarsem Dhandwar Singh (the artist formerly known as Tarsem Singh, or plain old Tarsem—his name just keeps getting longer) is very much in his element; he clearly prefers the god’s eye view whenever possible and finds countless opportunities here to have his actors strike poses modeled after the cover paintings of fantasy novels.
Theseus is bulgingly embodied by future Superman Henry Cavill, while his antagonist, King Hyperion, is played by Mickey Rourke, who seems to be channeling Brando in Apocalypse Now, what with his croaky voice muttering out from the gloom, his munching of chestnuts, the crumbs stuck in his scraggily beard, and his looming over a basin of water as he interviews an unfortunate minion. The two first meet when Hyperion, just like Thulsa Doom in Conan, slaughters mom before Theseus’ eyes. “Witness hell,” says Hyperion, whose route to mega-evil was earlier explained as the result of his despair over the death of his entire family during a plague. The gods did nothing to save them, he complains, so why bother with faith?
Turns out Hyperion’s got a point, because the gods can actually intervene when the mood strikes them, and in fact do so several times throughout Immortals, whose multiple dues ex machinas add up to an apologia for fundamentalists and constitute a defense for all those who choose to interpret religious texts literally. An odd sort of suspense, or perhaps anti-suspense, is at work here: no matter how heroic or resourceful Theseus and his friends are made out to be none of it really matters because every time they’re in big trouble the gods just swoop down and take care of business, climaxing in a cage match with some butt-ugly titans that involves a lot of exploding heads and makes no sense whatsoever. So the protracted third act is especially dull, and it doesn’t help that Steven Dorff’s horny thief—the closest thing to an actual character in the movie—gets swallowed up at the top of it in a horde of baddies.
