Diego Maradona (2019)

Directed by: Asif Kapadia | 130 minutes | documentary

It is strong shoulders that can bear the wealth, goes a well-known saying. But strong shoulders alone are not enough, as the main characters in the documentary trilogy by British filmmaker Asif Kapadia prove. In ‘Senna’ (2010) we saw how the legendary racing driver Ayrton Senna not only entered into a sporting battle with his rival Alain Prost, but also dared to tackle the political power games in Formula 1. However, even he was no match for the dangers and risks associated with motor racing at the highest level: in 1994 at the age of thirty he died after a crash on the circuit of San Marino. Just as tragic and short was the life of singer Amy Winehouse, who was immortalized by Kapadia in ‘Amy’ (2015). A unique musical talent who sang from her heart and in that way tried to analyze her own problems. Through her music and her stormy lifestyle, she made herself extremely vulnerable and therefore an interesting prey for the ruthless media and all kinds of vultures who wanted to get a piece of the cake. Amy fled into booze and her addiction took its final toll in the summer of 2011 when she passed away at the age of 27. Unlike Senna and Winehouse, Diego Armando Maradona, the protagonist in Kapadia’s third film in this trilogy, is still alive. But he also fits in the list of child prodigies who rose to great heights at a very young age, only to be confronted with the flip side of fame.

Argentine footballer Diego Maradona is the personification of the controversy. He grew up in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Villa Fiorito south of Buenos Aires, with loving parents. At the age of ten, he was discovered by scouts from Argentinos Juniors, after which he quickly made a career. Via Boca Juniors he ends up at FC Barcelona at the age of 21, which deposits a record amount for him. Injuries, illness, adjustment problems and provocative behavior cause the paths between the club and the star player to part two years later. Kapadia hooked up from the moment that Maradona made a remarkable career move in 1984: he signed with SSC Napoli, a team that barely won anything. In his own words, he hopes to find peace there, and to be able to play football. We can immediately see in the great first scene of the film that the peace and quiet in football-crazy Italy is hard to find. A car with Maradona on board speeds through the bustling streets of Naples to deliver it to the San Paolo stadium where the Argentine star player will be officially presented to the public during a press conference. The first question from a journalist is immediately a spicy one: whether Maradona is aware of the fact that the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, holds sway over the city. The stunned footballer looks hesitantly in the direction of chairman Corrado Ferlaino, who immediately puts the press mosquito in its place and dismisses all the club’s ties to the mafia as slander. However, the tone is set: Maradona has ended up in a wasp’s nest. However, a place where the rebellious street football player feels perfectly at home. The fierce chants that the Neapolitans receive during away matches only stimulate him more to achieve a good result. Each season, Napoli finishes higher in the Serie A and in 1987, led by Maradona, the first league title is won, which led to a month-long city celebration among the Neapolitan population.

Although Maradona has no physical advantage – he is only 1.65 meters, on the firm side and not the fastest – with his excellent technique, game insight, ball control and creativity he managed to become one of the best football players of the twentieth century. The video clips from the matches are therefore a delight for football fans, even if they are controversial, such as the memorable ‘Hand of God’ goal in the quarter-final of the World Cup in 1986 against England. That match shows both sides of Maradona, because in addition to that maligned 1-0, there was also the brilliant rush past five Britons that would mean the 2-0 and would be voted ‘Goal of the century’ by FIFA. Argentina would eventually also win the final; something that was obviously celebrated in a big way by Maradona and his teammates. Because Maradona could party like no other, they also knew in Naples where he now counted the local mafia leaders among his intimates. Drugs and women are his weakness. While his wife Claudia is pregnant, one of his mistresses gives birth to his son in a Neapolitan hospital. The newspapers love it, but Maradona denies everything. But it’s his cocaine addiction that actually gets him in trouble. His erratic behavior makes him less and less popular among the ‘Tifosi’ (Italian football fans); something that bottoms out during the 1990 World Cup, when Maradona has to face Argentina in the quarter-finals against Italy, nota bene at the San Paolo stadium in Naples. The star footballer is so arrogant to think that he, whose portrait hangs next to that of Jesus Christ in many Neapolitan households, will grant him the victory. But at the end of the day, even a Neapolitan is an Italian. The Argentines win the penalty shootout and Maradona plunges Italy into mourning. No one is more reviled than he is, in a country where he was esteemed not long ago.

As with ‘Senna’ and ‘Amy’, in ‘Diego Maradona’, Kapadia mainly uses authentic (and mostly never before seen) visual material from the archives of, among others, SSC Napoli and Maradona itself. The grainy and sometimes quite moving images bring the eighties back to life. Kapadia omits the ‘talking heads’ so often used for documentaries, but only allows those involved to explain the events verbally what the good momentum means. Especially with ‘Amy’ he managed to bring the viewer to new insights; he made us look at her life in a different way, so that we understood her sometimes incomprehensible actions. In ‘Diego Maradona’, Kapadia tries to do the same, but succeeds much less. One of the explanations, given by Maradona’s personal trainer Fernando Signorini, is that the footballer has a split personality: on the one hand there is Diego, a shy mother’s child who will never deny his humble roots, on the other there is the monstrous creation Maradona, who expresses his arrogance as ultimate weapon to master the pressure of the media. This theory is interesting, but not sufficiently elaborated. The fact that Maradona went overboard because he saw no other way to get out of the killer contract with Napoli (read: the Camorra) also doesn’t work out the way Kapadia would like it to be. After his active career, Maradona remained a controversial figure, evoking more feelings of horror and shame than a feeling of pity. At the end of the film, we see the once-celebrated football legend, bloated and dozens of pounds overweight, crying on a talk show that he is working on himself in a psychiatric clinic. It doesn’t affect us. Maradona is too capricious, too capricious, too implausible and too unsympathetic for that.

As a time document and as a tribute to the footballing qualities of the once famous Argentinian, ‘Diego Maradona’ with its unique archival footage has been a great success. As a portrait of Maradona, however, this film by Kapadia falls short. Whereas in ‘Senna’ and especially ‘Amy’ he managed to reduce his acclaimed main characters to human proportions, Maradona remains an inscrutable genius with whom we can hardly identify.