Maradona Hits the Big Screen

If you’re expecting Diego Maradona to fade quietly into obscurity any time soon, don’t hold your breath.

A documentary about his life, “Maradona,” directed by Serbian Emir Kusturica, premiered at Cannes this week, and it’s guaranteed to be controversial.

For Kusturica, that victory [the Argentina victory over england in the 1986 World Cup] was a triumph by the “third world” over the West, which he said imposes its rule on countries like Argentina and Serbia, using weapons such as the International Monetary Fund and NATO bombs.

“I cannot understand why the earth was not knocked off its axis after the match when a billion people like me jumped for joy,” he told reporters after he and the footballer briefly showed off their soccer skills for the benefit of photographers.

To ram the point home, Kusturica’s film shows the “Goal of the Century” again and again, each time transforming the sequence into animated scenes in which Maradona slaloms past cheating opponents such as Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair or George Bush.

Nope. No controversy here.

From the Reuters review:

In thrall to the iconic soccer wizard, the director makes the film as much about his simplistic politics and rabid fans as about his playing career.

We could question whether what Maradona really needed was an adoring filmmaker bowing down to him while presenting his “hand of God” goal as a political act of rebellion against repression.

(Um…dude? A handball does not a political movement make.)

Or we can just remember Maradona back when he really had something to offer the world. Even with his shoes untied.

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Category: World Football