ZIDANE - A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT (OST)

It's not possible to fully understand this album of post rock band from Scotland without referring to football and this magic events that took place at 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany (The movie was first screened just before Mundial). Music was never so close with this sport's discipline. The movie staggers the self-awareness of oriented listener and who knows if it didn't influenced the conscious of this great French footballer. When I saw what happened in the second part of the playoff I was amazed. It wasn't fantastic action of Zidan that was playing his best Mundial by leading this strange Raimond Domenech's representation to the final. It was rather disgraceful action. Zinedine Zidane hit his rival Marco Materazzie with his head and he left the pitch with the red card. It happened in the final of the FIFA World Cup, which France could have won on penalties! I was startled because although France was playing against Italy (that was excellent in the Cup, but in the worse condition that day) it was its best game in the whole Cup. Zidane was great and what is most important it supposed to be his last game in career. The game finally ended with penalty kicks, but Zidan's colleagues were so confused that they couldn't beat the Italians (I believe that psychic aspects are very important in this element of the game). What Zidane felt at that time, when he was sitting in total silence in the locker room. Was he crying? In that exact moment this whole show ended for him, he was awaken from a dream!

I'm almost certain that he heard the music of Mogwai at that moment, it must have been very close.

I don't know if ever before someone recorded something so gentle and intensive at the same time. Perhaps, at that moment, this music surrounded and cradled the lonely great footballer. It is whispering: "You are a human being for me, there is nothing you have to fight for".

To understand those words we have to bring back the 100 years old picture of Nietzsche announcing the Death of God. Since that time man is struggling to fill this emptiness somehow, but he is helpless facing cosmos and he himself. That is why becoming famous started to be the only dream of so many of us, to sink into the memory of descendants, to become someone great, as if we were born immensely small. Being the soccer hero means reaching divinity. The level of influence is so high in here that it is easy to lose the barrier between what is human and what is mythical. Zinedine Zidane reached the position of the football's god. But didn't he lose some part of himself while doing it? Didn't he become the puppet in hands of the stronger than he himself?

In Douglas Gordon's documentary movie camera is following the face of Zinedine Zidane during the game of Real Madrid and Villarreal. It traces his every step and move, the audience can be very close to its idol. In the background we can hear the music of Mogwai, which still reveals all its beauty when listen to the soundtrack. It is The director didn't expect that this game would also finish for Zidane with the red cart at the 60th minute. What a coincidence!

We will never know if my theory is right. If the most essential at that concrete moment was making human being free from the idea of hero. It could happen only there and then. We should ask Zinedine Zidane himself if he feels guilty of his reaction to the Materazzie's words insulting his sister. Was it an impulse that might have been stopped or was it the right reaction ? to shut the doors behind and leave everything behind. It lasted long but finely you became a man again, dear Zizou. Since then you will never stop to be a human. It's not possible that you, similarly to Maradona, believe you are a real god and you can be dragged down by your weaknesses without any consequences.