AIn the beginning there is the sound. From a largely silent world for humans. You can hear a gurgling, a faint deep noise. The first picture shows a boy underwater during a dolphin hit, then a man with a compressed air cylinder on his back. He waves at the camera, swims after a water turtle. A girl holds on to his shoulder and is connected by a second mouthpiece, like the boy with a woman: the Schumacher family under water. The parents are connected to the children as if by an umbilical cord. From them comes the air to breathe.
Why does the documentary about Michael Schumacher, the record world champion of Formula 1, always start in silence, surrounded by the deafening roar of the engines, the screams of the constantly excited Formula 1 scene? Because there are no loud answers to the question of all questions? How is it, the man who woke up the German motorsport world 30 years ago, threw it into ecstasy, lured society into the paddock, persuaded a federal government with the help of the Greens to establish a second Grand Prix in Germany? Who was greeted like a king all over the world.
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For almost eight years, since his serious skiing accident, nothing has been seen or heard from him. As in the 110-minute film that has been on Netflix since Wednesday. No picture, not a word. He immerses himself in his life like no other attempt to approach a person who managed to stay in the greatest imaginable public, what he absolutely wanted: a private individual, a family man.
“Michael never wanted to show weakness”
There are no direct statements about Schumacher’s health. The family supported the project of filmmakers and producers Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns, Vanessa Nöcker, Michael Welch and Benjamin Seikel and opened doors to important companions of the husband and father. Mother Corinna, the children Gina-Maria and Mick only agreed to one authorization right for the reproduction of the interviews with them. But nothing, explained Schumacher’s manager Sabine Kehm and also the authors, has been cut out. And so this film is determined by key words such as strength, loyalty, doubt, give, take, control, consideration, repression, gain and loss.
An exciting, moving reminiscence of the best of his time cannot do without the powerful images that are stored in the collective memory. They determine the film from interesting, rarely shown perspectives. But these career pictures are in direct context to what Schumacher made off the track, in his castle at home. At that time, it was not so easy to recognize, quasi live, because the perceived, described separation of racing driver and person, of Schumacher, the “computer”, of Schumacher, the displacement artist, was a good optical illusion . There was always someone strong and fragile in the racing overalls. But who, if not voyeur, wanted and above all who wants to see the “collapse of a leading figure”? This is the key question in a world where people are now showing off their bowels in an attempt to attract attention. “Michael,” says Sabine Kehm, “never wanted to show weakness.”
“Not that I know”
The documentary pans onto the track, focusing on the duel with the great, apparently untouchable Ayrton Senna. How Schumacher endangered the chief pilot with just his presence right at the beginning of his career, how the Brazilian defends himself as the top dog and punishes the boy from above. It was about a power struggle that cannot stand weakness, at least not a recognizable one. It only becomes daunting when Schumacher has left Senna far behind. When the strength of being able to suppress everything turns into the opposite for a moment.
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