Sideline Cut: KEITH DUGGAN

AYRTON SENNA: has any cat ever managed to look as cool in a flame-retardant driver's suit – apart from the days when Steve McQueen was hanging around Le Mans? The evening I went to see the film about the Brazilian driver, the house lights were still on in the theatre when I walked in to discover that most of the seats were already full and that the audience was entirely maleThe last time I encountered this kind of machismo environment in a cinema was circa 1983 when the entire roll call of St Joseph's NS was taken to see another famous Brazilian, Pele, act his way out of prison but not a paper bag in Escape to Victory.

And if it was disconcerting for me, you can imagine what it was like for the young couple who walked in moments later on what looked to have been a first date: both well dolled up for a trip to the cinema and overburdened with pop corn and slurpy drinks etc.

The girl was understandably startled when she entered the theatre and found herself confronted with what might have been a gathering for a Dr Spock Appreciation Club or some other fringe male enthusiasm. A quick scan of the audience would have confirmed for her she was the only girl present.

I had to (silently) applaud her escort for not going with the predictable rom-com and figured he regarded the film as a litmus test for their potential future: if she is not going to like a sombre documentary about a Brazilian race driver who was killed close to 20 years ago in a horrible accident, then she is not going to like me.

The other odd thing that happened at the film was that in between the four hours of trailers and the menacing instructions telling you to do this and to turn off that, the theme from Twin Peakscame on. It was only the opening bars but it was enough to transport much of the crowd (there was a collective sigh) back to the years when the fate of Laura Palmer dominated television land – which coincided with the years when Ayrton Senna was one of the most electrifying names in sport.

And then the film started and it was everything one could have hoped for – gripping, beautiful, understated, a terrific story brilliantly pieced together with lovingly spliced together footage of Senna’s life and times in Formula One. And it seemed that as well as being about the man, Senna was about a particular time.

For the crowd who attended the documentary the last evening, the film was definitely a plunge back to the last period just before sport began to merge with internet technology and around-the-clock coverage so that everything became instantaneous and all the time.

And what a throwback: race cars with big fenders festooned in all the cigarette brands in the world and when the drivers were the stars of the show rather than the cars – you can all but smell the Old Spice.

The duels between Senna and his French rival Alain Prost, originally a team-mate at McLaren but, in the early 1990s his absolute nemesis in terms of tactical approach and personality, were defined by the way the cars we watched on the tracks seemed like extensions of their beings: Senna unheedingly fast, daring and instinctively brilliant and Prost calculating, cautious and a cooler character. The Frenchman, perhaps undeservingly, comes across as slightly villainous but his objections to Senna were understandable: he was the guy whose neck the impetuous Brazilian was breathing down in a 190mph death machine, nobody else’s. There is a hilarious clip of Prost causing Selina Scott, BBC’s one-woman glamour/intelligence division in the late 1980s, to blush helplessly when confronted with his Gallic flirtation and there are equally naff shots of Senna lapping up the devotion at home in Brazil.

But mostly, the film just shows two men lost in the intensity and torpor of being the main players in what must be the craziest sports show on earth: a massive car factory stopping in every moneyed spot around the world to stage races that were, at least then, capable of producing wildly unpredictable moments. Everything is leading inexorably towards the day in Imola when Senna was killed after the Williams car he was driving left the track as he tried to steer around the Tamburello corner.

By then, it seemed as if that particular Grand Prix had been cursed: the Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger had been killed in qualifying on Saturday afternoon. Asif Kapadia, the director, includes haunting seconds of film showing the Austrian talking about the difficulty he had handling his car and joking that he needed to get it together.

And then, after his accident happens, we see Senna disturbed and upset by what has unfolded. It culminates in those famous, terrible minutes the following afternoon where Senna is seen on the starting grid, waiting to start the race and clearly in a troubled, distracted frame of mind. He has just minutes to live.

People with no interest in Formula One can recall Senna’s death. It was just one of those moments. “The blackest day for Formula One motor racing that I can remember,” Murray Walker said on the BBC news that evening.

But few people then could have appreciated just how important a figure he was in his native Brazil. Just three years out of an oppressive military regime and gripped by the most appalling economic conditions, Senna gave his countrymen something to be proud about.

The scenes of his final homecoming suggest that he mattered to Brazilians in a way that is unimaginable now that the country is preparing to host both the World Cup and the Olympics.

Nothing expressed the power of Senna’s legacy in Formula One quite like Michael Schumacher. The German driver was directly behind Senna that day in Imola and went on to take up the torch as the most gifted driver of his generation.

After equalling Senna’s total of 41 victories, Schumacher was asked if he was aware of this. Normally the most composed of sportsmen, Schumacher tried to reply but quickly broke down and covered his head distraught while two fellow driver, his brother Ralf and Mika Hakkinen, comfort him through what must be one of the most uncomfortable press conferences ever.

For years, a rumour has persisted that an Austrian flag was found in Senna’s cockpit after his accident and that he had intended waving it in honour of his stricken fellow driver. In the days afterwards, F1 boss Max Mosley was criticised for not attending Senna’s funeral. It turned out he went to Austria instead.

“Roland has been forgotten,” he said.

But the messy aftermath of Senna’s death, which included a lengthy court case and fundamental changes to the sport, are not the film’s concern. It ends with Senna’s death.

“This kind of thing has happened before and it will happen again,” Walker concluded bleakly on the news that day.

But it hasn’t, not yet, and as the years pass, the more Ayrton Senna seems like that rare exception; someone who could take a sport and interpret it through his sheer charisma and edgy brilliance for those few years until that luck or his mojo deserted him.

This film is a classy tribute.