The road and the fury

For the avid cinephile, whose interest in films borders on the obsessive, there is a special passion for the ‘making-of’ narrative. Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans taps into this with a behind-the-scenes look at Le Mans, a 1971 passion project of ‘King of Cool’ Steve McQueen, based on the legendary 24 hour motor race. With little in term of plot or dialogue, the film was an unmitigated flop, but still holds a special place in motorists’ hearts for the realism it brought to the screen.

Indeed, Le Mans is a visual treat – serpentine shots from the cars place the viewer immediately at the point where rubber meets tarmac. Directors Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna got lucky twice in their discovering of unseen raw footage from the 1971 film and unheard audio of McQueen himself. They approach the challenge of representing audio footage well, pairing it with sparse landscape shots that form a counterpoint to the dynamism of Le Mans.

Seen from our present-age viewpoint, McQueen is something akin to an extra-terrestrial: married to a Broadway starlet and oozing rugged machismo, he is a slice of nostalgic Americana; a throwback to an age that – despite embedding itself in the public consciousness – seems impossibly remote. McQueen’s obsession with representing his passion of racing as purely as possible may have crashed through the film barrier in terms of technique, but also put many people at risk, culminating in British racer David Piper losing a leg on set.

At 102 minutes, the film’s biggest issue is that it is too long. Certain scenes could have been cut out completely without no detriment to the structure – most notably a bizarre segue into the Manson Family murders that adds little to the film other then to its length.

As a piece of pure filmmaking, Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans is robust, and Clarke and McKenna deliver a film that hums with visual energy. Where it really excels, however, it in building up a psychological portrait of McQueen, allowing us to peer under the hood of an icon, and see the obsessive engine beneath.

Final Verdict: 3.5 Stars