'The Lionheart' captures Dan Wheldon's one-of-a-kind legacy through the eyes of his sons
In the nearly 12 years since the violent head trauma that ended his life at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the story of Dan Wheldon had never truly been told.
Countless artists, either with ties to racing or merely connected with the love, risk and loss of Wheldon’s story, have made their attempts. But Susie Wheldon, the wife of Dan and the mother to their two kids, had politely shooed them away.
Because despite the ‘2011’ next to ‘1978’ on his gravestone, Dan Wheldon’s story is far from over. There could be no telling of the legendary British driver’s legacy without the inclusion of the two sons – Sebastian (14) and Oliver (12) – who are the living embodiment of the fiercely driven, confident, emotional, brash racer who arrived in the U.S. in 1999 and soon took the racing world – in Indianapolis and beyond – by storm.
“Dan’s legacy is those two boys. I didn’t know how things were going to play out – if they’d even want to carry on and race and continue that part of Dan and who he was – but I knew Dan’s story didn’t end in Las Vegas,” Susie Wheldon told IndyStar. “I knew there was more to tell, but the timing had to be right.
“There had to be a continuation of this story, so that enough time had passed to where we could show the boys, their interests and who they are following in his footsteps and living out their own dreams and desires to become race car drivers.”
Laura Brownson offers that by directing and producing ‘The Lionheart’. It is a raw, sometimes comical, sometimes heart-wrenching, always honest documentary that couples Dan Wheldon’s rise, fall, recovery and death with the behind-the-scenes story of his sons’ journey in racing as they continue to cope with his death.
Starting in late 2020, Brownson and her team won over not only the Wheldons – including Dan’s father, Clive – but giants in IndyCar. Former teammates Dario Franchitti, Tony Kanaan, Scott Dixon and Bryan Herta, as well as team owners Michael Andretti, Chip Ganassi and Sam Schmidt cooperated in painting Wheldon’s legacy.
In an age of sports documentaries that have seemingly turned away from some of the hard truths in favor of glowing, sanitized versions of their protagonists’ lives, ‘Lionheart’ leans into reality. At times, it makes you shudder, whether it be Franchitti describing his dearest friend as “selfish;” listening to Andretti talk about how his onetime driver “burned bridges” in suddenly leaving for Chip Ganassi Racing at the end of his dominant 2005 championship run; or learning of how Wheldon discovered Ganassi’s attempt to replace him near the end of 2008 with Kanaan, and how, in finding out, Wheldon answered his owner’s call (after Kanaan turned down CGR’s offer) to offer the Brit an extension with the line: “I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number. I think you’re looking for Tony Kanaan.”
But it’s in those moments, Brownson’s film gets to the heart of its central message: The story of Dan Wheldon, in life, in death and afterward, was messy, complicated and multi-layered, glued together by every emotion you could imagine felt by those who have – and still are – living it.
“There’s a lot of different themes in this story, and there’s some hard things as well,” Susie Wheldon said Thursday night, minutes before ‘The Lionheart’ opened this year’s Heartland International Film Festival at The Toby Theater at Newfields. “It was really important to be able to tell it all in a way that still shows Dan as a human being with some of his flaws, but also to celebrate the great person he was.”
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Made possible by the level of trust Brownson and her team built in their year-plus embedded with Susie and her boys, the film also captures the real, raw emotions of the trio in their moments of continuing to live with the grief of Dan’s death and the ways in which it finds its way into their everyday lives. You see it in the letter Sebastian wrote to his mom – which Susie reads and then discusses with her son, all with the cameras rolling – after a tense, emotional weekend at the karting track where he first admits his internal struggle with the disappointment of not having his father to walk the grid with before his races.
Just before that moment, the film captures and shows a moment of the boys’ mom dreading the day they would feel and bare to her that honest truth: “One day, my boys are going to say, ‘I wish my dad was here,’ because I don’t know anything.”
In other scenes, ‘Lionheart’ catches Susie standing at the base of a high-rise, floor-to-ceiling hotel room window, looking out over the sunrise-lit Las Vegas skyline, baring her soul with the memory from 10 years prior of begging that sun not to rise – because it would mean having to cope with a day beginning without Dan for the first time. Earlier in that trip out west, cameras follow and capture a grief-stricken Susie as she braces herself to enter the gates of Las Vegas Motor Speedway once again – while there for her sons’ karting weekend.
A film that begins with Sebastian excusing himself from the trio sitting on their family couch rifling through letters from well-wishers that came after Dan’s death – “This is too much for me, mom. I don’t want to be talking about death,” he says – is bookended with Susie sitting on the track pit wall alone, sobbing uncontrollably and then the image of her walking up the track’s banking and touching the wall that ended her husband’s life.
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In between, Brownson does a seamless job of weaving the two-pronged Wheldon family racing story together, in a manner that makes the identities of the three short, blonde-haired boys only clear by the level of graininess in the shots. Later, the film takes scenes from the family’s trip to the 2021 Indy 500 that includes the boys cheering in the stands and Susie’s stunned gasps at the race’s down-to-the-wire finish and couples it with race footage from Wheldon’s second 500 victory in 2011 in a way that makes you feel at times that they’re cut from the same event.
The energy, honesty and emotions carried throughout the film leaves it abundantly clear that Susie’s notion that her late-husband’s life and impact continue to reverberate through her family and the racing world at-large is as true as ever. Wounds remain open as discovery about life after Dan continues.
As she did in a Vegas hotel room in the film, Susie continues stumble upon old memories of her life with her husband in expressing her love to her boys – the latest a game of ‘I’ll squeeze you as much as I love you’ that leaves her, only mildly serious, in wondering whether her boys left her with bruised ribs.
After all, Dan’s love is powerful, unceasing and captivating – even 12 years later.
“I think Dan’s love affair with Susie and their relationship is a very big part of this film, but it’s also about Dan’s love for racing,” Brownson said. “Dan lived a really amazing life, and he died doing what he loved.
“Both those things require risk to achieve something meaningful.”
How to watch 'The Lionheart'
>>The film will air once more during the Heartland International Film Festival: Saturday, Oct. 14 at 7 p.m. at The Toby Theater in Newfields. Those interested in attending can purchase tickets at: https://hiff2023.eventive.org/welcome .
>>HBO has purchased the rights, and Brownson said Thursday that it will first appear on its platforms in 2024.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: 'The Lionheart': Documentary captures Dan Wheldon's complicated legacy
