http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hw3s2/Zidane_A_21st_Century_Portrait/
the film company has rather overegged the lead-in, but this, for those of us given to late night BBC4 viewing, was a real treat. For those of you who missed it, the film was a ten-camera job on Zidane playing for Real in his last season - the season in which the wheels finally came off the galacticos.
Extreme close-ups dominate. Feet, face, neck, sweatband. Near perpetual motion, but the surprise is how little he (and, one presumes, others less talented) gets to do with the ball. There are moments - he uses his great strenght to take the ball away from three defenders, delivers the perfect cross, and makes a goal, but, in the main, it's two or three touches, mostly sublime, but almost always part of a dense pattern of passing and posession that is the reverse of the Roy of the Rovers football that genius is supposed to grant us.
This is, however, a chilling film. Zidane's striking face will always add a touch of menace, but, after a while, I was struck by his isolation. His communication with his team mates, other than Roberto Carlos, is limited to single words, and he addresses nobody by name other than David Beckham. It may be that his human relations are outside the game, but remoteness of this intensity takes work. And then..the referee awards a penalty against Real, which is converted and he says to the refereee 'you should be ashamed'.
Toward the end of the match he gets himself sent off, after running twenty yards to get involved with something that had nothing to do with him. It's as if he can't be arsed to stay on the pitch, and you realise his World Cup headbutt wasn't some moment of madness. It's who he was.
the film company has rather overegged the lead-in, but this, for those of us given to late night BBC4 viewing, was a real treat. For those of you who missed it, the film was a ten-camera job on Zidane playing for Real in his last season - the season in which the wheels finally came off the galacticos.
Extreme close-ups dominate. Feet, face, neck, sweatband. Near perpetual motion, but the surprise is how little he (and, one presumes, others less talented) gets to do with the ball. There are moments - he uses his great strenght to take the ball away from three defenders, delivers the perfect cross, and makes a goal, but, in the main, it's two or three touches, mostly sublime, but almost always part of a dense pattern of passing and posession that is the reverse of the Roy of the Rovers football that genius is supposed to grant us.
This is, however, a chilling film. Zidane's striking face will always add a touch of menace, but, after a while, I was struck by his isolation. His communication with his team mates, other than Roberto Carlos, is limited to single words, and he addresses nobody by name other than David Beckham. It may be that his human relations are outside the game, but remoteness of this intensity takes work. And then..the referee awards a penalty against Real, which is converted and he says to the refereee 'you should be ashamed'.
Toward the end of the match he gets himself sent off, after running twenty yards to get involved with something that had nothing to do with him. It's as if he can't be arsed to stay on the pitch, and you realise his World Cup headbutt wasn't some moment of madness. It's who he was.
