One Word Movie

Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait

This is the film which does nothing except follow Zidane around the pitch during a Real Madrid game, to the exclusion of almost everything else. I have been trying to work out if it is good or shit but one thing is beyond dispute, it is certainly boring. I reckon they chose Zidane, not because, Dalai Lama-like, he is the current incarnation of the best footballer in the universe, but because he is so unbelievably inscrutable. It is similar to watching Spock play footie, and disturbingly like going to a Kraftwerk gig. Mind you, one of the blokes who made this also did a video installation piece, called 24 hour Psycho, whereby Psycho was slowed down to 2 frames a second, so it literally took all day, and then had hairy enough bollocks to call it art.

So that sums up why it's shit (that, and the way the camera focuses on the crowd, and then pulls focus onto Zidane, about 500 god dam times). Why it's good is that when he smiles, or gets into a fight, or uses the most amazing skill to set up a goal that even I could score, that moment is stunning. By my count you get about four or five moments like that for the price of admission. But they'd hardly register without all the boring bits. So that just about pushes the whole film into good territory. With this in mind, I am going to do a video project where you show the old BBC1 testcard for four hours, and then right at the end the girl stabs the evil clown in the eye with her chalk and its brain squirts out. When it gets shown at Cannes I reckon everyone will run out of the cinema screaming because they will be unable to withstand the intensity of the emotion. And just imagine the extras you could pack on to the 3-dvd special edition!

posted by Chairman Peyote @ 3:18 PM