Let me preface this by saying that I’m a HUGE fan of Zinedine Zidane. He is probably my favorite player of all time, in any sport. When he was at Juventus it was amazing, he moved on and I followed him to Real Madrid. I never became a fan of Real, but I’ve watched a lot of their games just to see Zidane play. I’m such a fan I gave my son the middle names Zinedine Zidane, so yeah it’s safe to say I’m a big fan of his. When I heard of this documentary about Zidane I had to get a copy of it. Finally was able to, so I sat down and excitedly watch it.
WOW, and unfortunately that’s not in a good way. Zidane A 21st Century Portrait premiered at Cannes last year and is a documentary filmed from Zidane’s perspective during the Real Madrid vs. Villareal game on April 23, 2005. The movie was filmed in real time using 17 synchronized cameras and some say ends up “Halfway between a sports documentary and a conceptual art installation.” My take, it was a HUGE disappointment. The entire hour and a half is footage from the game and nothing else. If I wanted to watch this I could have tuned into a Real Madrid game. Granted some of the scenes of him in action were nice to see, but it’s nothing that is worth writing home about. We get little instances of subtitles telling us what’s supposedly in Zidane’s mind during a game, but that’s it. We never see what really makes him tick, why he looses his cool more than he should.
This documentary was sorely disappointing and unfortunately I could never recommend it to anyone.