McLaren: A story all Kiwis can celebrate
McLaren (G) 93 mins NEWZealand is awfully good at finding something internationally successful to be proud of, but while sometimes this can feel a bit embarrassing and parochial, being the birthplace of one of the most enduring Formula One racing teams in the world is plenty to write home about. Bruce McLaren’s unassuming trajectory from invalid schoolboy to world champion racing car driver is also a story to crow about, and something all Kiwis can celebrate.
McLaren is the muchanticipated documentary created by one of our prized exports, Roger Donaldson, a born Aussie who grew up in Aotearoa. Donaldson gave us Sleeping Dogs and Smash Palace before heading (as one inevitably had to in the 80s, if one wanted to pursue a legitimate film-making career) to Hollywood, where he directed Kevin Costner in the thriller No Way Out, Tom Cruise in Cocktail and the volcano in action flick Dante’s Peak.
Returning to his homeland, and his long-time love of racing (which has stemmed from his first-ever short film about Burt Munro and was later demonstrated in his biopic of the rider in The World’s Fastest Indian), Donaldson has obtained intimate access to Bruce McLaren’s family and friends to paint an often touching, albeit resoundingly positive, portrait of the great man.
This positivity may be because McLaren simply was a really nice bloke. The film sticks to happy footage and charming black-andwhite photos of a handsome, jolly, Kiwi chap whose childhood was mired by illness which saw him spending two years flat on his back, but always with a cheerful grin. Donaldson employs a pretty seamless meld of archive footage and dramatised scenes which accompany voice-overed interviews with those who encountered our hero.
It’s all very interesting, and at times we are moved by the drama of a key race or the tragic loss of a racing colleague. But it’s no Senna, a biopic it will inevitably be compared to by dint of its F1 connections and inherent tragedy. Whereas Senna used its driver’seye camera work to get the viewer’s pulse racing, McLaren feels like a more leisurely, less urgent affair.
Neither does the film touch on anything which might cast a shadow on McLaren’s gleaming reputation. It’s hard to believe any winner on the world circuit would have made it through the 1960s ignoring the bevy of beauties who threw themselves at F1 heroes, but McLaren comes off as spotless: the first Kiwi to break through on to the world stage, and the youngest (at his time) to win Formula One, but with nary a professional rivalry nor personal hiccup. Everyone speaks in glowing terms about his innovation and smarts, and if the film doesn’t give us any grit, well maybe there wasn’t any, in which case this proves the maxim that nice guys can finish first. - Sarah Watt