Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006)

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

While on paper the idea behind Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait might sound off the wall; 'out there' or quite intriguing, the film is actually a bit of dud. I use the term 'film' very loosely, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is more of a 'piece', an experiment as filed by Frenchman Philippe Parreno and Scotsman Douglas Gordon who visit the Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, home of Real Madrid, and shoot French born of Algerian descent footballer Zinedine Zidane for ninety minutes – the length of a standard league football match. The film is made up of about three perspectives, each one being cut to when the editors obviously assume you've had enough of one or the other. One perspective is the bog standard camera mounted on the gantry as seen through television; another is a ground level camera focusing on Zidane in close up-ish format with the third being from a third person perspective, watching the match on an actual television monitor, pixels 'n' all.Do you remember, or have you even heard of, a function called 'Player Cam'? It's a gimmick BskyB used to run, or perhaps still do, on their Sky Sports coverage that enables the viewer to switch to a certain channel and watch a designated player for as long as the directors choose as a certain camera stays on him. For a lot of people, this will be nothing new or particularly interesting. To be blunt, the experiment doesn't work here. The title of the piece is Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait with 'portrait' being the important word. The makers are trying to create some sort of work of art, some sort of painting or sculpture of a person (Zidane) that they clearly admire and feel should be captured in an artistic manner. It doesn't work through the medium of cinema, and this is the evidence it doesn't.When you go to a gallery, you don't have something like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey playing, on mute, on a screen in the corner for people to observe for as long as they wish amidst all the other works of art, so why contaminate things that belong in a gallery with things that belong on a cinema screen? Principally, what's wrong is that the two directors can pick and choose which match or performance out of Zidane they actually want to deliver to us. If Zidane had been substituted after fifty minutes in this match or had been seriously injured after ten and brought off, we'd never have even seen THIS particular match/performance/result of the experiment and they would've had to have tried again some other time. Thus, it renders a lot of the 'deeper thinking' ideas displayed in the film a little silly because 'this day' could have been any day. This creates a problem and exposes a flaw in the experiment, the subject of the work of art is free-thinking and unaware of the artist thus every time the artist will attempt to 'capture' the subject, a different result will be the result of the attempt.In simpler terms, when Monet painted 'The Water Lilies' or Da Vinci captured the smiling woman that is the 'Mona Lisa', they had a subject or physical shape that was either set in stone and was always going to look exactly the way it is, it just needed an artist to implant their own style on it, OR they were able to direct a live subject and position the subject as well as capture specific emotions from them in the manner they desired. With footballers, the theory fails. You can never capture a true representation of a footballer because they'll always perform differently in different matches. An example might be German goalkeeper Jens Lehmann.Two matches could be used to 'capture' Lehmann: the 2006 Champions League final in which Lehmann starts the game before committing a foul and is consequently sent off after 18 minutes after much controversy. Then there's the Germany - San Marino match in which he stood in goal and did very, very little for 90 minutes as his team up the other end smack thirteen past a hapless opponent. If you were making Lehmann: A 21st Century Portrait, which do you select to 'capture' the player? Does it even matter? We don't need post-Warhol artists (not filmmakers) to display the 'quality' of certain players in this manner because the exercise is futile and will never capture a 'true' portrait.For all the talk via some subtitles within the piece about thinking outside the boundaries and of the 'bigger picture', there is really very little going. When the directors assume us to be getting a little tired of certain shots or subjects, they'll cut to blinding floodlights as they zone down onto us and at one point, the camera takes an odd detour up some stairs to an upper tier to capture the match from another level. But these are cutaways, distractions from the gimmick that is Zidane himself, captured in all his glory as a supposed artist himself. Additioanlly, the directors get the dramatic finale to the match they probably craved. But where does it all go? Could you feasible make 'Beckham: A 21st Century Portrait'? (who was actually playing in this match) or 'Ronaldo: A 21st Century Portrait'? Or maybe you could mix it up and follow a referee for the duration of a match. Where would it all end and how long would it be until everyone realises what a daft exercise it really is? Not long at all.

I must admit I liked the concept. I would have preferred it had he not known he was being filmed at the time but thats not important. Here we got a film documentation "art piece" portraying the football star of choice in a completely new way. The cameras shoot him and only him most of the time in close up throughout the entire duration of the film and only on rare occasion and with good reason does it choose not to on interval. Here we follow, at times surprisingly poetically his heart throughout the 2005 game of France vs Brazil, not that we actually see the game as much as Zidane's contribution, at times useful, other times vacant. I like how the director plays with sounds and effects in a manner that effects our emotions and expectations. However I do believe that this film could have been done equally effective on a lower budget. Well three cheers to Douglas Gordan.

On the 23rd April 2005, 22 men came out onto a rectangle of grass in front of a crowd of tens of thousands. This walk in the park was the league match between Real Madrid and Vilareal, a game that would see three goals, several bookings and three red cards before those involved were allowed to leave the grass.Audience expectation is a terrible thing and I think it is one reason why so many viewers seemed to have similar issues with this film. Zidane etc was sold as a football film built around the concept of watching a master at work. The trailer said as much and I think a lot of people tuned in for that reason. However this is not really what the film is about because it was not really made as a portrait of the football of Zidane but rather of the art of Zidane. What this means is that the film is often quite "arty" in delivery and this actually gets in the way of the football and prevented me enjoying it consistently on this level.At times the footage is great because it doesn't really worry about the football to the degree where all shots are wide and tell you what is happening. It gives a range of shots and, despite their grainy nature, the shots of the television for replays is useful. However I did get the impression that Gordon and Parreno were overly conscious about not just making a clever Match of the Day special and thus they did push the art aspect of the film. This is seen in the decision to show replays by filming a TV screen rather than just filming the action in a normal way and playing it back. Likewise blurry footage, fast cuts, the choice of soothing but bland score, the way that the film gets from crowd noise to babbling commentators and the subtitled thoughts of Zidane.I found this off putting as it seemed forced and seemed to fly in the face of the fact that this was a film (not an installation), had been marketed as a football film and had been built around one of the finest footballers at the time. This is not to say that it is bad because, as an art piece of filming, these parts work well and, in their place, would be create. Just like the football stuff works well and it is only when it mixes with the art stuff that it falls down. So really it is two good projects but the reason it is only so-so is that it doesn't merge them well at all and indeed both aspects take away from one another rather than enhancing the experience.It is quite dull at times and the lack of clear audience will be an issue. Those coming for the art side will be bored shirtless by some of the "straight" moments where Zidane is just filming making runs off the ball etc, while football fans will be frustrated by some of the filming and the maker's lack of passion for the man's role within the game. Of course having said that, this works the other way as well with, for example, the football crowd enjoying watching Zidane moving, fighting, kicking, failing, winning etc and the art crowd enjoying that aspect. Just a shame that the project could not have delivered consistently in one way (even if that one way encompassed both these factors) rather than making them feel like distinct aims.

The guys who made this movie got it so wrong. They actually show Zidane as a tired static player and not the football god he is.Zidane is my idol for many years and what makes him a great player is: 1. his absolute vision of whats going on on the football field 2. His abilities to make the players around him better.Yes, he's got amazing control of the ball and elegant movements that wont put to shame even a ballet dancer. But thats not it. For example, to show the amazing abilities of the conductor Zubin Mehta, you wont film him waving his hands for an hour of a silence movie. You must record his orchestra and show the connection between the conductor's brilliance and its outcome on his "TEAM" of musicians. The same goes to Zidan.It is pretty obvious that the film makers here, do not understand football and what really made Zidane the amazing player he is. They showcase a too long, too static performance, mostly in close ups. Most of the time you don't know where Zidane is located on the pitch, or how does he reacts to the opponents formation or plays.Sorry. Nice try but the results are poor and boring.