Senna vs. Rush

smatticus

on 2/10/2014

These two have single-handedly converted me from someone who couldn't care less about F1 to someone who follows it with a fairly keen interest in less than a year, and there aren't many films that can claim to have opened up my interests so profoundly in recent years. That alone says alot about how I feel, but according to Flickchart, these films are so far shaping up to be among my favourite films of the 2010s decade. I've seen them multiple times, and they haven't gotten any worse. That said, Senna takes pole position, as it is definitely the more poetic film, with seemlessly flowing archive footage woven together with fantastic editing and carried along with beautifully emotionally strained score. Rush is a lot more gritty by comparison, and gets points for giving a more balanced view of the drivers it portrays (whereas Senna is a gushing love-letter at times), but it still has the feel of a Hollywood movie, and carries with it the jarring but (given the nature of the true story) often unavoidable dramatic cliches of one, as well as some rather blunt, repetitive, throwaway lines which make up the focus of much of the film's criticism; "to stare death in the face...there's nobility in that...it's like [we're] knights!" But the fact remains that I have watched these films multiple times and I love them no less than I did the first time, and I will no doubt defend these as classics until my dying days. Senna wins.

ming_21

on 2/16/2014

Senna. Amazing documentary