By Paul Byrnes
Schumacher ★★½
(M) 112 minutes
Three German directors worked three-and-a-half years on this biography of Michael Schumacher, one of the greatest racing drivers who lived. They have unearthed rare family footage and put the racing footage together in a way that recognises the drama of Formula One.
Schumacher’s career has plenty to justify a great film, even before the tragedy of his post-racing life. Why, then, is the film so disappointing? Let me count the ways.
Michael Schumacher at the 1994 Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka.
One, it fails to tell us the most basic information – who, what, when etc – out of some misguided sense of propriety. If you don’t know that Schumacher had a major skiing accident in 2013 that damaged his brain, put him in a coma and a wheelchair, the film won’t tell you.
Instead, we get aerial shots around the French ski resort of Meribel, where “something” happened, and no information about what. This is the worst kind of “delicacy” – abrogating the filmmaker’s responsibility to inform the viewer, out of some misguided sense of duty to the subject.
How is he doing now, you ask? His wife Corinna – a tower of strength – says Michael always said, “private is private”, and the family has respected that. She adds cryptically that he is “here, but different”. I found out more in two minutes on the web than from watching the film: for the record he is at home, awake and has made some progress.
Schumacher with his children Mick and Gina-Maria, in a photo from the documentary.
The presence of family interviews indicates it’s an authorised biography. Is that why it pussyfoots around the tragedy? Apparently not. The notes stress it was a fully independent production and the family did not interfere.
Which is a somewhat disingenuous explanation of the realities of this kind of hagiography: without the family footage and the family interviews, which signalled to his friends it was alright to co-operate, the film could not have been made. It’s a new twist on the meaning of that word “independent”.
Even if it dodges the hard bits, does it tell us much about the man? Yes and no. Schumacher is a remarkable combination of talent and vulnerability – that much is clear. He arrived on the scene at 23 with a will of iron, remarkable skills and a sense of indestructibility.
At the start, in 1991, he was as ruthless as the man he knocked off the top perch, Ayrton Senna, but Senna’s death robbed him of his certainty. The best moments remind us Formula One is not just about the cars.
Second, the film shows how much his friends, his crew and even many of his rivals love and respect him. His humanity comes through, despite his remoteness. These qualities make it watchable, but it can’t stand on the podium with the earlier documentaries on Senna and Niki Lauda.
Ultimately, it’s a sentimental portrait that wants to please the insiders. We on the outside have to scratch our heads and fill in the missing details.
Schumacher is now streaming on Netflix.
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