Non-Review of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

I shouldn’t be writing this. No, I’m not going to write anything lewd. What I shouldn’t be writing is this non-review of the movie Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. But, having arrived too late to get into the theater, I cannot write not about the movie itself. Instead, I will speculate about why so many people turned up on a Thursday night in America, a country whose people are not supposed to care about soccer.

The announcement in the Washington Post warned readers to get there early to get seats, but I didn’t take it that seriously. How early did I have to arrive on a Thursday evening to see an obscure art film about a French soccer player? This is America, after all. Nobody cares! Or so I thought.

When I arrived at quarter to eight, I knew immediately I had underestimated the interest in the movie. The line at the Hirshhorn Museum stretched from the back door around the large building to the front. Crowd-estimation skills have never been my specialty, but I’d say there were a good three to four hundred folks there.

A very small part of the line waiting to see Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

I asked the middle-aged man at the end of the line if he was waiting to see the Zidane movie. He said he was but that he’d already been informed that the cut-off for the eight o’clock showing was a good hundred or so people in front of him. He told me they’d decided to add a ten o’clock showing due to the extraordinary interest.

Now, I love Zidane, but not that much. Zidane’s beautiful moves can’t make up for my lost beauty rest. Having decided I wouldn’t wait around to watch the movie, I immediately became interested in the masses who were responsible for me not getting to see it. I watched as those who had gotten there early enough (some arrived at 6:45, I was later told) were ushered into the theater and those who hadn’t stayed outside.

A Hirshhorn employee came to the door to tell those who were left outside that they would, most likely, not get to see the movie that night. She said that they had let in those who would see the eight and ten o’clock showing. People could wait outside in the hopes that some inside would leave, but there were no guarantees.

To my surprise, some of my fellow rejects were downright angry. One tried to bully the employee into letting him in. Others simply looked frustrated and forlorn. The employee’s attempts to tell them they could order the movie on DVD from the UK were almost like salt in the wounds (doesn’t she know about DVDs being coded by region?). Most of people eventually left, but a few stuck around.

Kasim George was emphatic about trying to get in to the ten o’clock showing. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m definitely going to stick around.” Was he frustrated? “Not at all,” he told me. “[Zidane] is a legend.”

George told me he had long followed Zidane’s career (his first memory of the Frenchman was when he still had hair) and said “if you are a real fan of the sport, you would have ultimate respect for him.”

What was he hoping to gain from the movie? George said he had “heard the way they did the documentary was like you being beside him. I had to see it … to get an idea of what he sees on the field.”

George was not the only person who to refer to the now retired Zidane in the present tense. José Granados told me that Zidane “is still a good player.” For many, it seems, Zidane’s influence on the game and on them was so huge that they still think of his presence on the field in the present.

Does Zidane live on even in retirement?

I was only able to speak to a limited number of people, those dedicated enough to stick around for two hours on the off chance they might be let in, which means I can only speculate about those who did see the movie. I imagine they had similar motivations for wanting to see Zidane as did those I spoke with, but what surprised me most was the number of fans who had shown up to see the movie.

If Americans don’t like soccer, someone forgot to tell the hundreds in line at the Hirshhorn last Thursday night. Of course, Washington is a large city with a huge immigrant population that was well-represented in that line. But those who say that America is not a soccer country often fail to take into account the diversity in the US of A. Immigrants who play soccer in this country, often under the radar, have been an important, if often ignored, part of the sport in this country.

That’s not to say there were no native-born Americans in the crowd. I saw suburban high school kids, college frat boys, and middle-aged men reading serious magazines. Anthony Stepter and Maria Flores, among those who were hoping to be let in for the ten o’clock showing, told me they were attracted by the art of the film as much as the soccer. The reasons to want to see the film were as diverse as the people who espoused them.

I draw two lessons from my experience of trying and failing to watch Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait: 1) there is more of an interest in soccer in this country than many people recognize and 2) when the Washington Post says show up early, take them at their word.

(If you want to read actual reviews of the movie, I would recommend hitting up Rotten Tomatoes. And if you’ve seen the movie, feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it.)

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Europe, North America, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.