The Art Snob Archive

Futbol - Oct 27 2006

The Toronto Film Festival last month saw the Canadian release of Zidane: a 21^st Century Portrait, and due to some terrible twist of fate, I still have not seen it. I feel victim to a terrible injustice, dear readers, and there is only so much a man can take.

Now, before all my fellow art snobs attack me for my apparent interest in a movie about sports, perhaps I should explain myself. Indeed, Zidane is a documentary about a famous French soccer star, focusing exclusively on his performance for Spanish team Real Madrid in a 2005 game against Villarreal CF. It is, however, imbued with enough experimentation, innovation, and Scottish post-rock to make any art snob salivate.

Really though, let's face it. We're not going to get any masterpieces based on polo or fencing anytime soon; soccer is the next best thing. First of all, it's predominantly European, and so by default deserves our attention. Soccer carries with it none of the redneck connotations of baseball, the chauvinism of American Football, nor the hip-hop commercialism of basketball. In fact, I'm even going to stop calling it 'soccer.’ The successful art snob should pretend to be part of the European tradition and call it 'football.'

Compared to fast-paced North American sports like hockey, football is more suited to the art snob's taste for watching paint dry. Indeed, football is the sports equivalent of watching a Gus van Sant film: you have to work to enjoy it. Hockey has more in common with a Steven Segal movie: fast, dumb and dirty. Yeah I said it.

Further reassurance lies in the fact that the directors of Zidane: a 21^st century Portrait have put a tremendous amount of effort into making the documentary as pretentious as possible. The film itself is a collection of footage collected over 90 minutes of one game by 17 synchronized cameras all focused on Zidane. Bonus points are awarded for the obligatory arty montage at half-time in which the directors speculate on a missed dentist appointment and the current situation in Iraq.

During the game, however, the frame never leaves Zidane. An entire football match is recorded and the ball is only ever seen when the French star touches it! Minutes pass where the most exciting movement is the dripping of sweat off his bald head! What beautiful, boring, eccentric indulgence!

As with most arty portrait films, the result is touted to be a "penetrating view of the human condition." Scottish critic Jason Solomons compares it to "the detail, grace and compassion of a Velasquez or a Degas." How could an art snob not appreciate it?

Admittedly, the directors could have gone a bit further in making their movie appeal to the elitist elite. For instance, why in God's name did they have to choose to focus on a player from the notoriously overrated Real Madrid, the Velvet Revolver of European soccer? The film would have quadrupled its indie cred had it chosen to focus on Matthew Etherington in a West Ham game.

I am obliged to commend the directors, however, for choosing to employ Scottish geniuses Mogwai to score the film. Never has a band named after a character from the Gremlins movies so seduced my soul, and I can only imagine how perfectly their dynamic, guitar-driven dissonance compliments a good old-fashioned football match.

So how has this film, with its magnitude of hype and artistic cred, eluded me for so long? Why must I wait while those ignorant fools in Cannes are repeatedly spoiled? It is a great mystery I may never solve, dear readers, and before long you may find me crying on the steps of the Princess Cinema, cursing this unfair providence. If it comes down to that, I apologize, but sooner or later we must all die for art. Perhaps it is my time. Farewell.

posted by HLL @ Thursday, October 26, 2006