Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story’ on Netflix, a Respectful and Diligent Biography of a Racing Legend

Netflix documentary A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story profiles the Argentinian driver whose career meshes with that of Formula One racing. The film focuses heavily on the 1950s, when Fangio dominated the European F1 circuit, notching five championships while driving for four different carmakers. It’s a convincing argument that he’s the greatest F1 driver ever, but does the movie have something to offer to those of us who aren’t race fanatics?

A LIFE OF SPEED: THE JUAN MANUEL FANGIO STORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The legend of Juan Manuel Fangio parallels the onset of Formula One racing, one juggernaut complementing the other. Hailing from Balcarce, Argentina, Fangio worked his way from mechanic to co-driver to driver; showing considerable skill and physical endurance, he won a handful of races in Argentina until the sport was put on ice due to World War II.

He moved to Europe in 1950 to participate in the first-ever F1 circuit. In great contrast to the vast team of specialists in the current incarnation of the sport, Fangio stayed up all night polishing his own crankshaft prior to his first race. He barely lost the 1950 World Championship of Drivers to Italian driver Giuseppe Farina. But he’d take the crown in ’51. And ’54. And ’55, ’56 and ’57, accumulatingb an insane record of 24 wins in 42 races, hopping from Maserati to Mercedes Benz to Ferrari to Alfa Romeo.

Fangio claimed to have no rivalries off the track — the film documents how competitors would embrace each other like friends after races, how an Argentinian teammate once gave up his car to Fangio so he could notch the points necessary to win the championship. Historians, aficionados and current and retired racers all testify to Fangio’s legend, but ultimately underscore how “the man eclipsed the myth.”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Senna (2010) is another nonfiction account of a South American F1 driver, Ayrton Senna, who notched three world championships before dying in a 1994 crash. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn Senna considered Fangio to be the greatest driver ever.

Performance Worth Watching:

Memorable Dialogue: A commentator doesn’t mince words about Fangio: “He was a god.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Director Francisco Macri neatly entwines the history and evolution of F1 with Fangio’s story, offering context and perspective on the driver’s considerable achievements. But it’s a dry, linear-biography approach without much of a dramatic arc. Sure, some documentaries overemphasize the highs and lows of their subjects’ lives, for entertainment value, for better or worse. But A Life of Speed curiously tamps down the tone into a nice, flat, monotonously educational presentation, methodically working through year after year, car after car, win after win. It’s diligent, but dull — although I can see racing fans appreciating a bevy of archival footage, and insightful commentary from some of the sport’s biggest names.

Sometimes, Macri deviates from the Fangio timeline, stirring interest with tangential explorations of various facets of the sport — how contracts don’t allow drivers to hop from carmaker to carmaker anymore, or how significant numbers of deaths on the track led to F1’s implementation of safety measures. Curiously, the film mutes the drama of Fangio’s career — it glances over his crashes, mentioning hospitalizations but not specific injuries, and renders his kidnapping by anti-government forces (!) prior to the 1958 Cuban Grand Prix a footnote. It doesn’t even include the detail that Fangio ultimately befriended his captors (!!), which strikes me as the kind of thing a more engaging biodoc might explore. By diligently avoiding sensationalizing Fangio’s story, Macri, frankly, has rendered it boring.

P.S. By the way, did Fangio have a life outside of racing? Wife? Kids? Parents? BFFs? If you want to know this stuff, go read Wikipedia, because you won’t find it here.

Our Call: SKIP IT. It’s fine, a respectful treatise on one of the great international sports figures. But unless you’re a fan tuned to the technical and historical sides of racing, A Life of Speed is kind of a drag.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story on Netflix