Longtime Oscar-watchers know that the Academy’s documentary branch is a law unto itself: no amount of glowing reviews, previous awards, robust box office and/or pop-culture prominence is enough to secure a film a guaranteed nomination in the Best Documentary Feature race. Indeed, anticipating the “surprise” snub in the branch’s series of shortlists is something of an annual pundits’ parlor game: last year, Davis Guggenheim’s popular “Waiting for Superman” was the winning/losing horse, depending on your perspective.
Still, inasmuch as one can predict these things, Asif Kapadia’s marvelous “Senna,” which I reviewed earlier this week, ticks all the boxes of an Oscar frontrunner in the category.
A rousing, emotionally rich biopic with a strong dramatic arc that makes it accessible even to those with no interest in motor sport — the latter audience representing its biggest obstacle in the States — it arrives on US screens today boasting sensational reviews (for the number obsessives, its Metacritic score currently sits 84), record-breaking UK box office and a Sundance audience award. When it comes to BAFTA night, at least, the other four documentary nominees may as well not bother turning up. (It’ll likely be a hot contender for the Best British Film prize too.)
It seems perverse to begin a review of a documentary — one about a well-known, latter-day sports legend, at that — with something as mundanely cautious as a spoiler alert. Until recently, if general knowledge hadn’t already acquainted a viewer with the outcome of a non-fiction feature, or if the laws of real, unheightened life hadn’t made it patently obvious, the filmmakers would usually do the job for us anyway, working backwards from set facts to find the variables we don’t know, or didn’t know we knew.