2073**

Just watched Asif Kapadia’s new film 2073. It’s an odd and not particularly successful mashup of 80pc contemporary political doc and 20pc dystopian fictional film. The doc is depressing but doesn’t have anything new to say about how Big Tech is subverting democracy. And even Samantha Morton can’t save the awkwardly morose 2073 sections set in a climate-ravaged world. I think the problem may be that in a week when Elon Musk is literally trying to subvert British democracy and Mark Zuckerberg decided to appease the Felon-In-Chief, we don't really need a nicely edited clip reel of how the world is going to hell in a hand basket. The issue isn't complacency. The issue is that we are all too well-informed and all too clueless as to how to stop it. (You notice here, that I assume no-one who like Musk and Trump are going to watch this, let alone be persuaded by it). So, in the final analysis, this is just a pointless but worthy agit-doc that is preaching to the converted.

 

2073 has a running time of 85 minutes. It played Venice, Sitges and London 2024. It opened in the USA on December 27th 2024 and in the UK on January 1st 2025.

DIEGO MARADONA

DIEGO MARADONA is the latest doc from Asif Kapadia - the film-maker behind the superb SENNA and AMY.  Once again he uses the same technique - curating a collage of previously unseen video and audio to give an overarching narrative about an icon's inner life.  He doesn't insert himself overtly into the doc in the way that Nick Broomfield or Michael Moore do - but his thesis is very present, conveyed through his editing and shaping of the material. In those prior docs, Kapadia created a villain - Alain Prost and Amy Winehouse's dad. In this one, he creates both hero and villain in Diego and Maradona - the charismatic super-talented slum kid who made good - and the cocky, cocaine-fuelled adulterer who imploded.  It's an effective duality but leaves other factors unexplored. Because Maradona's life - unlike Senna or Amy - allows us a window into two particular social issues which are as fascinating as he is. The first is the racism and classism of Italian society that allows northern football fans to call the Napoli fans black cholera-plagued scum. The second is the influence of the mafia on Napolese life.  These intersect in Maradona, because he was bought for a record sum by Napoli - the poorest club in the poorest town in Italy - bankrolled by the mafia who then courted Diego and gave him cocaine and women. They also intersect because Diego sympathised with Napoli and for a time embodied all its best hopes because he too had been called all the names, treated as scum, and could become their avatar.  I wanted to hear more about these issues and felt that Kapadia was either reluctant or unable to explore them further. And I feel that this is because he was over-concerned with using his treasure trove of unseen Napoli football footage, and remains resistant to using talking heads to provide social context.  The problem with this approach is that for all but the most ardent soccer fan, watching footage of 1980s seria A football isn't that interesting.  And second, that I left the doc wanting more - unsatisfied despite sitting through a 2 hour doc.  That said, it's still a film worth watching for the occasional flashes of Diego's charisma, and the joy of seeing him teach his daughter how to swear at the Juve fans. 

DIEGO MARADONA has a running time of 130 minutes. It played Cannes and Sheffield 2019. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in the USA on September 20th.

AMY

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

AMY is the controversial new documentary about the hyper-talented North London jazz and soul singer Amy Winehouse, who died at the age of 27 in 2010 from complications due to long-term bulimia, drug and alcohol abuse. The director, Asif Kapadia, opens the story with Amy as a 16 year old goofing around with her close friends on video, clearly talented, and quickly signed up by manager Nick Shyamsky.  She's evidently steeped in the jazz tradition and wants to make great music rather than achieve a fame that she knows she'll find hard to handle.  She's soon signed to Island Records, brings out her debut album "Frank" and uses the money to first move into a small flat and then into her house in Camden.  The freedom allows her pot smoking to morph into heavier drug use, and she's still bulimic but she's still not on crack cocaine or heroine when her manager and friend, Nick, tries to intervene. This is the first of two pivotal moments in the documentary - the moment where maybe early intervention might have led to the start of recovery because the paparazzi glare, and Blake Fielder-Civil, hadn't yet appeared.  But Amy wants her dad, Mitch, to make a decision, and he says she doesn't have to go, much to Nick's horror, and echoed in the lyrics of "Rehab".  This feels like an early chance foregone, and sets us up to explore Amy's trauma at her father leaving her mother when Amy was 9, and being an absent figure who's approval she still craved.

SENNA - a documentary worthy of Ayrton

Never has a movie inspired such tear-stained reminiscence among my close friends and family - some of whom worked in F1 racing - as Asif Kapadia's new documentary, SENNA.  For those of us who watched racing in the 80s and 90s, Ayrton Senna was an icon. Young, handsome, rich, for sure, but more than that -  brilliant at driving in wet conditions, and bold in exploiting a gap to take the lead.  He was everything a racing driver should be. 

Of course, at the time, as a kid, while I knew of his rivalry with the French incumbent world champion, Alain Prost, I hadn't realised just how poisonous that rivalry had been, nor the mechanics of their famous clashes in Japan.  Nor had I realised just how political FISA had been, with its French boss, Jean-Marie Balestre apparently hand in glove with Prost, the Sepp "Colonel" Blatter of his day. I hadn't appreciated how revolutionary the Williams' team use of electronics in the early 1990s had been, and that this had prompted Senna's move from Maclaren run by the true gent., Ron Dennis. I remembered the tragic build-up to race day at Imola 1994, but I had no idea how reluctant Senna had been to race that day.  The memory of that day is still with me. It's like remembering Hillsborough - one of those searing moments where you realise that you are watching tragedy unfold in front of you in real time, and feeling powerless but transfixed - that a young handsome boy who had so much talent had died on, of all things, the seemingly benign Tamburella turn.  

The brilliance of this documentary is twofold. First, that the director and producers managed to persuade the Senna family and Bernie Ecclestone to co-operate - giving them access to the home videos, their impressions of what Ayrton was thinking at crucial moments, not to mention the extensive F1 archives, with footage of everything from on-board cameras, to drivers' briefings, to conversations in the pit. This level of access is unprecedented and results in a documentary that has the freedom of a feature film in terms of camera placing and editorial choices. More importantly, it takes the movie beyond recreation of key races to the emotional state of mind of Ayrton - most crucially in interviews with his sister and team-medic.  

But access is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a great documentary. And SENNA *is* a great documentary. The reason for that is that it has a clear narrative arc (kudos to writer Manish Pandey) and some of the tropes of a classic fiction drama. This helps focus a film that could've been over-whelmed by the sheer weight of material, and become unbalanced by Imola.  Indeed, the wonderful thing about this doc. is that it focuses on Senna's life - gives you a sense of how important his faith was to him, reminds you of his charitable work, situates him within a loving but fearful family, and shows both sides of his character - both the integrity and humility but also the pride and fall from grace in Suzuka 1990.  

The resulting documentary is insightful, well-constructed and powerful.  I started crying at Interlagos 1991 - the sheer force of will that made Senna drive 10 laps with just sixth gear and to lift that trophy in front of his home crowd.  And when the race day at Imola began, it was game over.  That sense of anticipation - the directorial choice to keep us with the on-board camera - and Antonio Pinto's sensitive score....What can I say?  It all adds up to a documentary that is unmissable for F1 fans, but - and here I can speak to the experience of Doctor007 - a movie that works even for those who have never heard of Ayrton Senna.   For Doctor007, SENNA worked as a fascinating character study that gripped him on an almost Shakespearian level.  After all, is there anything more archetypal - more universally translatable - as the story of a young pretender facing an older incumbent - of a man of faith battling the corruption of the establishment - of the under-dog making good - of a good man dying young?   

SENNA opened in Japan and Brazil in 2010 and in Italy, Germany and France earlier this year. It played Sundance 2011 and opens in the UK on June 3rd. It opens in Australia on July 21st.