Zidane

I finally got round to watching Douglas Gordon and Phillipe Parreno's Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait this evening. The film follows legendary footballer Zidane for the duration of a match against Villareal, with 17 cameras tracking his every move. Edited together with the varying footage and soundtracked beautifully by Mogwai, the film is first and foremost a treat to watch and at times moving. Michael Fried has discussed this film in relation to his interests in Diderot's notion of absorption, which argues that the most true form of portrait shows the subject completely absorbed in their actions, unaware of being observed. As he points out this film does that majestically, whilst also posing interesting questions due to Zidane's immediate surroundings: he is obviously aware of the magnitude of the people watching him (in the stadium but also around the world on television), yet his ability to remain absorbed completely in the task at hand never wavers. It is this aspect that I found most interesting, the way it allows us to reflect on the nature of the image today, its mass circulation and the spectacle of the sport itself, a truly global sport of which Zidane was a global icon (albeit a tragic one...)