Zinèdine Zidane

Watching a football match will never be the same for me after I saw Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait at the Amsterdam Filmmuseum a few nights ago.

This film follows a single match (Real Madrid v. Villareal) through two alternating camera angles which make the sport of football (and the media upon which it thrives) utterly strange.

One view: the familiar, grandstand, wide-angle view of the pitch with TV commentary, but out of focus so that all the players run around looking fuzzy. Second view: seventeen sideline cameras permanently trained on the crystal-clear figure of Zinèdine Zidane.

And trained not just on the moments when Zidane gets the ball; also on the off-the-ball moments of intense observation, the rhythms of the match registered on that mesmerising face.

Two views, two media. The constant switching between these two perspectives - two different ways of seeing the sport of 'football' - coupled with the absence of the usual distractions of a typical match (the miskicks, the offsides, the waiting for injured players) and the intense background absorption of the crowd, all go to make 'football' feel totally different to what we expect under the ritual formulae of television.

So the effect is of media playing off each other, and competing for meaning. And the media wallpaper of commercial football - the shirts with mobile phone logos, the animated billboards, the crazy flashing scoreboard - get caught in the act, looking suddenly surreal.

Zidane's face is a film in itself. Rugged, focused, poised, tragic, a barometer of the whole match as it happens.

There's hardly any language in the film except for a few subtitled quotes from Zidane. 'When you are immersed in the game...you are never alone'.

Zidane does three remarkable things in the match where his footballing genius unwinds, and then confounds itself. He creates a superb goal with a long run through into the opponent's defence; sets up another goal with a darting run into the penalty area; and then gets involved in a fight and gets a red card.

The saturating intimacy of the cameras allows us to see some of this genius at work, and get insights into the economy of energy that makes it work, as well as the volatility that undermines it. But there are finally more questions than answers as Zidane is shown the red card and the film ends, with his team destined to win without him.

All at once, the prying camera demystifies a great talent, and restores its enigma.

During the interval there is no half-time orange. Instead, fragments of world news from that day in 2005, a reminder of a world outside football, but connected with it. Again a mix of media treatments, drawing images out of their normal domestication in 'news'.

At one point we see the familiar aftermath of a car bomb somewhere in the Middle East. In the foreground, a young boy with the number 5 and the word 'Zidane' on his back.
Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait, dir. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno.