Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
First screened and reviewed in December 2024
Directors: Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno. Experimental documentary chronicling Zinédine Zidane's objective and subjective experience of one 90-minute soccer match, in something close to real time. In Brief:
An unusual angle on top-tier athleticism and an inspired visual and sonic showcase. Has its limits.
VOR:③
A clever use, pragmatic and conceptual, of then-new digital technologies. Some of its boons were era-specific but some still endure.
My first Douglas Gordon experience! Hard to calculate how much more unique this would have felt if I'd had it together to experience the novelty of up-close digital photography at sporting events almost 20 years ago. As a sheer act of media archaeology, I loved the early montage of steadily clearer and more intimate perceptions of the soccer field with each new generation of equipment, from the blurry transmissions of slightly watercolory athletes on antenna TV to the high-quality, up-close images and vantages possible in 2005. Now Zidane itself would almost certainly look like a now-superseded evolutionary step in the way we currently watch. Still, the movie retains visual interest and even offers a rewarding conceptual reframe: despite soccer's well-earned reputation for constant excitement, in contrast to baseball's and American football's even better-earned reputations for too much dead time and administrative haggling, and by holding so tightly to one player, even an especially crucial and well-integrated one, Zidane shows us how much of the game at an individual level involves a lot of hanging back, observation, calculation.
The spectacle stays pretty dynamic and absorbing even if the movie has conveyed its key impressions and effects well before its 90 minutes are up. I didn't get a ton from the on-screen, unvoiced captions of what Zidane is maybe thinking or has said about the sport at other dates. My head did not explode upon learning that the timeline of a match feels more fragmentary than linear to a participant, especially such a strategic and contemplative virtuoso, and I'm not sure the shape and protocol of the project really served the culminating moment when—well, you'll see, but also you kinda won't, even if you watch. Other people are more excited than I am by the Mogwaï score, which is basically a taste thing. On the other hand, the variety, variability, depth, and nuance of the overall sound mix is one of the project's stellar achievements, at least as much as the spry and complex film editing. I doubt I'll ever need to see Zidane again, but despite (and because of) being far from the target audience, I'm glad I stepped up to experience it once. Grade:B
