Albert Camus. An unlikely starting point for the review of a docufilm chartering a ‘game in the life’ of Zidane, the most-talented sportsman of my football-watching generation. They were both Algerian immigrants to France, but their similarities, character traits and causes are aligned to a much greater degree than a simple historical analysis might suggest.
They say life often imitates art - the game captured by this beautiful piece certainly does.
First, a background to the film. Zinedine Zidane is one of the greatest footballers ever to grace the world stage. The sheer volume of accolades and awards garnered by ‘Zizou’ dwarf the achievements of any modern player. As captain of the France team, he secured a World Cup in 1998, followed by a European Championship in 2000. He was named FIFA World Player of the Year a record three times between 1998 and 2003, as well as collecting European Player of the Year in 1998. He was named the player of World Cup 2006. Basically, the boy can play.
In 1942, Albert Camus wrote ‘L’Etranger’ (the stranger), a slow-moving, insightful and ultimately seminal discussion on existentialism and the role of a man in a world of alienation and misunderstood communication. The protagonist, Meursault, is a man struggling to come to terms with the universe’s inhumanity to its citizens. However, he moves through his reality with a seeming indifference to any such injustices and, while lamenting them, he refuses to change, portraying a man with an aloof sense of calm in the face of a cruel, adverse world. Yet within this tranquil existence, there are flash points, particularly the instance where he kills a man on the beach who had threatened his friend. When tried for the crime, he is unapologetic and his belief in truth and justice are unrelenting, so much so that his love of truth overrides his self-preservation instinct.
I shan’t spoil the rest for you (although I suspect I already have). Suffice to say that in Meursault, we see a man affected only by the physical, not the emotional; a calm, composed-but-lonely character with an unrelenting single mindedness.
This, too, is Zidane. Furthermore, Douglas Gordon captures this in his 21st Century Portrait as if he was Albert Camus himself and Zidane was his Meursault.
The film is unlike any other of its kind. Gordon took 17 cameras to a Real Madrid vs Villareal game and filmed for 90 minutes. Sounds like a normal game of football, right?
Wrong. All 17 cameras are trained intently on Zidane and not the ball, capturing every step, blink and twitch. To watch a footballer in isolation is a strange exercise; to watch Zizou is even stranger. For one of the world’s best players, Zidane sees the ball fleetingly through the 90 minutes and when he does, it is with a stone-cold emotion that he executes the briefest of touches. Between these touches, too, he is emotionless. He prowls around the pitch, does not smile nor frown. His unflinching look of disinterest belies his reputation and yet in those brief moments when he is called upon to engage in the match - to which he has thus far seemed peripheral - he does so with the grace, poise and strength of an Olympic gymnast. Then…nothing. Back to sauntering the pitch, spectating, awaiting his next call.
Gordon’s editing and directing is masterful. In Zidane’s downtime, the screams of the crowd proliferate, accentuating the notion that there is a whole extraneous world around Zidane, one to which he is incidental until such times as it engages him briefly; those moments and touches punctuated by the fierce sounds of boots pounding on turf and against the ball.
At one point, Zizou makes a fleeting run completed with a sublime dummy, which seems just like any other shown thus far in the film. It is only on the wide-angle replay that the viewer is privileged to see the goal that Zidane has just created. If it were only for the shots of Zidane, you would not even have known about the resulting goal. In the face of this success he remains as unaffected and emotionless as when his team, Real Madrid, give away a crucial penalty and subsequent goal later in the game.
In the closing minutes of the match, Zidane is sent off for his involvement in a fracas with an opposing player. It should be noted that Zidane is not a dirty player, he is not known as a great tackler or as particularly aggressive. In spite of his apparent composure and almost shy approach to the game, he was sent off 14 times in his career, a high tally for any player, let alone one of his quality.
In this instance, Zidane, true to character, seems remorseless and unapologetic preminiscent to the incident which served to punctuate his career only a few months later. In case you were living on another planet at the time, Zidane, announcing his retirement prior to the FIFA World Cup in 2006, played his swansong game in the final, the biggest stage on world sports and watched live at the time by 284 million people. He was ultimately sent off for head-butting Marco Materazzi, the Italian who, it emerged, had incited Zidane by insulting his mother and sister, much like Meursault’s victim had insulted his friend.
Camus concluded ‘L’Etranger’ with the following: “As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”
Quite.
