By James Mackenzie
48 minutes ago
"Maradona by Kusturica" allowed Serbian director Emir
Kusturica to indulge his idolization of a sporting legend.
"Nowadays, when popularity is projected through football as
a supreme sport on the planet, he is qualified to be a god,"
Kusturica told a news conference after a screening at the
Cannes film festival.
Kusturica, two-times winner of the festival's Palme d'Or
award, began making "Maradona" in 2005, when the former World
Champion was a bloated shadow of his former self, battling
health problems and the effects of years of drug abuse.
"It wasn't particularly difficult to talk about. What is
good is that I've survived to talk about it," Maradona said.
Coming after U.S. director James Toback's sympathetic
portrait of heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson, the film, showing out
of competition, is the second at Cannes to focus on a
charismatic but troubled sporting hero.
Maradona, 47, went from the tough Buenos Aires suburb of
Villa Fiorito to the pinnacle of his sport in a career
culminating in a 1986 World Cup triumph that included two of
the most famous goals in soccer history.
His two strikes against England, one punched in with the
aid of what he later called "the Hand of God" and another
scored after a run through a mesmerized England defense, summed
up Maradona's impudence and genius as a player.
But apart from grainy clips of some of his goals, there is
little treatment of his playing career in a film that
frequently focuses on the director, who in the opening sequence
is introduced as "the Maradona of cinema."
There is much denunciation of U.S. President George W.
Bush, shots of Maradona with Cuba's Fidel Castro or meeting
members of Kusturica's family as well as footage of
anti-globalization protests and political exposition
"We aren't all obliged to think as the Americans do,"
Maradona said. "We all have the right to think or speak or
express ourselves. We all have the right to freedom."
A self-proclaimed Church of Maradona, conducting marriages
and pseudo-religious services is shown and adoring fans mob the
star when he returns to Naples, the poor southern Italian city
where he achieved some of his greatest successes.
He speaks movingly about missing his daughters' childhoods
because of his drug abuse and regrets that he would have been
an even better player had it not been for his addictions.
But, now looking trimmer, he says he has recovered and he
rejected suggestions of a parallel with Tyson, who also went
from sporting triumph to drug-induced disaster.
"He lives in suffering, I live in joy, that's the
difference," he said.
(Editing by Matthew Jones)
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