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Diego Maradona

Asif Kapadia's newest doco follows Diego Maradona's time at Napoli, with the occasional glimpses of his life before and after. It focusses on this period (1984 - 1991) as this was Diego at his best and, arguably, worst. I've seen a couple of docos and lots of highlights of Maradona as a player but this is the first film I've seen that balances the two sides - Diego AND Maradona. This dichotomy is best summed up by his old fitness coach, Fernando Signorini - "With Diego, I would go to the end of the world, but with Maradona, I wouldn't take a step." Kapadia treats his subject pretty even-handedly, neither fawning nor condemning, letting the visuals and interviews inform the audience's judgement.

On the topic on interviews, Diego Maradona, like Senna, relies purely on old footage to tell the story. There are no new 'interviews' aside from audio of Diego and others played under old game vision or news reports. I reckon this technique is well chosen, as it almost forces Kapadia and his editors to 'find' the story without falling back on filmed interviews, 'voice-of-god' narration or shit re-enactments. And some of the found footage is fantastic, albeit a bit time-worn. Victor Morales, the commentator from the 1986 World Cup Quarter final against England, screams, "Who is this cosmic kite?! What planet are you from!?" after Diego scores his wonder goal. Cosmic Kite? Brilliantly bonkers. The film starts inside a car driving to the Stadio San Paolo to unveil Diego to 75,000 ecstatic fans. There are clips from parties, changerooms, tennis courts, training grounds - the collection is fairly exhaustive.

The seedy side is covered by Maradona's connections with the Guiliano family, members of Napoli's infamous Camorra gang. Kapadia looks at his dalliances with cocaine, prostitutes and nightclubs, his acrimonious parting from Napoli and the general Italian fan's hatred of him. The film actually ends with a resolution of sorts regarding family issues (spoiler territory, perhaps).

Diego Maradona is a supremely made documentary that looks like it took years to make (and reportedly did) with a nicely balanced excavation of the career of one of the greats, if not the greatest.

See also:

Senna (2010), Kapadia's look at the life of Ayrton Senna and When We Were Kings (1996), Leon Gast's doco on Ali and Foreman's Rumble in the Jungle.

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