Zidane

Some claim that best athletes come from the worst living conditions. There are hell of a lot examples for it and Zinedine Zidane is one of them. There was a success story coming when Zidane was migrating from Algeria to France. He grew up from slums to be one of the best football players ever played the game. These are the subjects of most documentaries made about Zidane. However, even if it is not solely a documentary or only an art-film, in the film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006), there are less things about Zidane and there are more things about presentation.

Zidane can be seen as an individual athlete in an actual match, with his gestures, sprints, his talking to teammates, his seeing the game while not playing the ball, spitting on the floor, all in all, everything you does not see while you are watching the match in front of T.V. It is beautiful as it portrays and helps you to empathy the experience of an individual in a team, group activity.

From time to time, we see the cameramen’s perspective while s/he is broadcasting the match through the camera, and then we switch the perspective of the T.V. audience, then the perspective switches back close to Zidane. It may be done in order to show the levels of representation. There is a setup which maybe stars with the entertainment thing; in here it is football. Football is a game to entertain people. As people wants to enjoy it while not playing it, they want to see it. Some of the people have the needs to watch it in the stadium with thousands of other, in the atmosphere, some of them do not. Therefore there is another setup that connects you to the atmosphere and entertainment through your t.v. set. While the audience in the stadium sees the whole pitch according to the angle they are sitting in the building, the audience watching T.V. sees the things cameramen shows and t.v. regie directs. There is no chance of watching only an individual in both audiences while he plays; but this film breaks that bounds.

Zidane’s personal comments about his past years about the representation of the game through t.v. and comments about the experience of playing in front of an audience are given as subtitles in a composition with the starting music.

Football is a team game played by individuals can be seen in this film, through emphasizing an individual. Real Madrid has always been one of the best football teams in the world and in the time of this match against Valencia F.C. in 2005, Zidane was thought as the best currently playing football player in the world; and some critics believed that he is the third best player ever after Maradona and Pele. Even if he was thought to be the best in the world while he was playing, Madrid club had lots of bests in their squads, so, even if you are the best player in the world, the ball comes to you almost once in five minutes or so. When it comes it again goes from you in almost five seconds. It is also a film that shows, there is no individual pleasure in football, it is a team game. Also the ending of the film has an interesting parallel with the ending of Zidane’s career. As Zidane is subtitled about his future career’s ending while he walks to the locker room as he is sent off with a red card, his career ended with a red card in the world cup 2006 finale.