Excellent look at Wayne’s world
Wayne (M, 98mins) Directed by Jeremy Sims Reviewed by James Croot ★★★★
He was the Wollongong whizzkid who became a national icon to rival Skippy, Allan Border and Greg Norman.
The first Australian to win the 500cc World Motorbike Championship, Wayne Gardner also helped popularise the motorsport in Australia and was the one-man ambassador for bring the global series to ‘‘the lucky country’’.
But as Jeremy Sims’ (Last Cab to Darwin, TV’s A Place to Call Home) engaging, enlightening and sometimes riotously entertaining documentary showcases, behind the larrikin exterior was a man full of self-doubt and owing a great debt by the woman who supported him – long-term girlfriend Donna Forbes.
Both are insightful and surprisingly intimate about the highs and lows of Gardner’s quest for motorbike glory, as are his family, friends and rivals in the copious and impressive amount of archival footage gathered for this project. But among all the showboating, exciting racing and brushes with the lifestyle of the rich and famous on display, one moment sticks out. It’s during Gardner’s first-ever world championship race when his bike sickeningly collided with the head of Franco Uncini, sending his helmet flying.
When it comes, the footage is frightening and the aftermath, where a distraught Gardner rushed to the hospital desperate to ensure his fellow rider was OK only to encounter both angry fans and Uncini’s family, is surprisingly emotional. That’s especially because most of the sequence, like many of the early scenes, is animated, a storytelling device that works extremely well in bringing Gardner’s colourful tales (especially of his Steel City childhood) to life.
Not that Wayne is full of doom and gloom, in fact far from it – there are plenty of laughs to be had. There’s a Norm Gunston ode to Wollongong, some cringe-worthy beer ads and Australian bicentennial footage and the sometimes hilarious running battle between Gardner and great rival Eddie Lawson.
The more aloof American is shown rubbing salt into the wound of Gardner’s 1986 championship loss by pouring beer on the Aussie rider’s head, before failing to show up on the dais in defeat a year later. However, he does finally give his competitor some credit when lamenting that while Gardner got given the key to the city by his hometown when he won, all Lawson got immediately after his first win ‘‘was a parking ticket’’.
You don’t have to be a motorsport fan to richly enjoy the latest work from Kiwi producing duo Matthew Metcalfe and Fraser Brown (McLaren, the upcoming Scott Dixon doco Born Racer), but it will certainly help.