These eyes. This emptiness. The players of SSC Naples are at the Christmas party, happy gossip in the room, sitting in the middle of Diego Armando Maradona, and in his eyes is the pure tragedy. The tragedy of a life in glory. Or what looks like it.
These eyes say: Help! I'm losing control of my life.
It is the most impressive among all the impressive images of this documentary about what is probably the greatest footballer ever. Diego Maradona has everything you can have, he is adored by the fans, he has plenty of money, and it's hell.
British director Asif Kapadia has earned a reputation as a renowned documentary filmmaker through his films on Ayrton Senna and Amy Winehouse. The film about Maradona can be understood as the endpoint of a trilogy. A series about idols and the price they pay to be idols: Senna, a monstrous hero for the Brazilians. His sudden racing death in Imola was a shock to the world. Winehouse, which broke completely at its fame. Maradona, who is basically the same, even if he survives. The fame was too much.
Kapadia focuses in his two-hour film on the Maradona years in Naples from 1984 to 1991. The player is at the zenith of his skill, the whole world will witness a soccer genius. Maradona becomes World Champion with Argentina, he redeems the Tifosi in Naples with two championship titles in Italy, he brings with the SSC the Uefa Cup. It could be the happiest years in Maradona's life. It will be the years when he loses himself.
"I just want to be Maradona"
As a 23-year-old Maradona comes to southern Italy, he has two frustrating years at FC Barcelona behind him, in Naples, everything should be better. It's supposed to be what he wants: "I just want to be Maradona."
But that does not work in this city. Naples, the poor south of Italy, this unfathomable city, the dirty-grandson, on whom the Italians in the wealthy north look down with contempt, humiliated over and over again. At the SSC's guest appearances in Milan and Turin, the Neapolitans are ridiculed, spit on, taken down as if they were the country's doormat. The supporters in the opposing curves are holding up placards urging the Neapolitans to wash themselves. Vesuvius should break out again and extinguish the whole city with a fire roller. Naples ducks under contempt - and suddenly the Messiah is in town.
Olaf Kraak AFP
Director Asif Kapadia at the presentation of his film
85,000 come to Maradona's performance in the Stadio San Paolo, the first press conference sinks into chaos, a journalist asks if the Camorra have their hand in Maradona's engagement. SSC President Corrado Ferlaino shows the reporter with genuine or mock indignation out of the hall, the camera pans on Maradona and his astonished, innocent look. What's going on here?
He will soon notice. Kapadi's images, collected from private archives, from television recordings, backed by Maradona's sluggish narrative voice in the background, they rush, they follow the superstar at every turn, as the Neapolitans have pursued him. If you can ever speak of superhuman expectations, then it is those who have the city, the club, the people of this 23-year-old young man. And the worst possible happens: he lives up to her expectations.
In 1987 SSC Napoli will become the Italian champion, for the first time in its long history, knowing who they deserve it for. The city fumes over, for days, for weeks, it is the complete ecstasy of hundreds of thousands, the liberation from all the humiliations. The patron saint of the city, San Gennaro, had done his duty. Naples now has a new saint: San Diego. Holy one, alas, a god. Maradona is at its peak. And from the peak, it can only go downhill. No human endures being a god.
Maradona, the boy from Villa Fiorito, the poor district of Buenos Aires, he, who actually only wants to play, gets it all upside down. He enjoys it, and he hates it, this life as a supernatural. He plunges into the nightlife, you see him more often with the brothers Giuliano at his side. These are not any nice brothers, even if they pretend they are the Camorra. They feed the masses' darling with cocaine, with groupies, and Maradona kokst and celebrate from Monday to Wednesday, from Thursday he trains for the weekend. A balancing act that Maradona will not be able to continue at some point.
AP
World Cup 1986, the hand of God, a football history moment
Fernando Signorini, Maradona's Girl for Everything, Consultant, Manager, Personal Coach, says in the film, "There's Diego, and there's Maradona, for Diego I'd go to the bottom of the world, not take a single step for Maradona." The longer Diego Maradona is in Naples, the more he will Maradona, Diego disappears.
The hectic cuts, the coarse-grained images of yesteryear, awaken the horrifying sensation of watching a superstar break down in the cinema.
When the young Neapolitan Cristiana Sinagra turns to the public with the announcement that she expects an illegitimate child from Diego Maradona, and the footballer denies this against better knowledge, the country has its scandal. From now on everything collapses over him. Investigations, interrogations and the paparazzi, previously everywhere, give now no more peace. Maradona just wants to get away, away from Naples, but Ferlaino will not let him go, his goldfish. Only in 1991, Maradona is suspended, ostracized, he may leave Italy. It is an escape.
At the end of this deeply impressive film, Kapadia makes a sudden jump to 2004. It shows a bloated Diego Maradona in the TV studio, broken, a picture of misery. A man who could never cope with what happened in Naples. It is a sight that may break your heart. Who sees him, who sees the film, will never scoff at Diego Armando Maradona. The greatest of football.
Maradona says in the film: "On the field, life becomes unimportant, everything else becomes unimportant." The tragedy of Diego Maradona is that there is a life outside the field.
Diego Maradona, Director: Asif Kapadia. 130 minutes. From the 5th of September in the cinema
