'Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait' Q&A

We talk to director Douglas Gordon on his first work for the cinema.

Sep 28 2006

Winner of the 1996 Turner Prize, Glasgow-born artist Douglas Gordon (right) has pieces in many of the world's major museums. Although cinematic influence has played a part in his output – most notably in his famous ‘24-Hour Psycho’ shown at the Hayward Gallery’s 1996 ‘Spellbound: Art and Film’ exhibition – his first work for the cinema is ‘Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait’, in which he and fellow artist Philippe Parreno used 17 cameras to capture footballing legend Zinédine Zidane’s every move during an April 2005 Spanish league match.

Given the very separate realms of the art world and the football field, Zidane could quite easily have told you where to go – how come that didn’t happen?

The idea’s very simple, and I think he quickly realised that Philippe and myself are pretty passionate about the game. I think he was also intrigued by his own sense of self, because he already knew that the film would most likely come out around the end of his career, and he wanted to leave something behind that wouldn’t just be ‘The 10 Best Goals of Zidane’, something which wasn’t necessarily based on the whole cult of personality, but had more to do with the complexity of a real man who exists in the world as a working person.

Did you realise when you were shooting the live game that the images would turn out to be so magnetic in a way which is actually quite difficult to explain?

We were in the control booth on the night of the live game watching the feeds come in from the 17 cameras, so we knew what we were getting. It was only in the 12 months of editing, as we watched the material take shape and transform itself that we really discovered what we had. Some people have actually said it reminds them of a wildlife film because the way he moves is so compelling. I suppose the disguise of the film is that it’s an objective observational study, but when you get into it it’s clearly subjective. He does have a certain aura, a different way of occupying space, and it’s quite interesting that he was involved in judo as a young man, and had to choose between it and football.

The way you mix down his vocals and use subtitles to convey his thoughts seems to add to that sense of mystique.

We were really surprised how little he actually says to his teammates in the course of the game, but, yes, it was about letting the intrigue last longer by layering the voice within the sound design. The thing with the subtitles is interesting though because, as Philippe says, you read them with your own inner voice and so you project them onto him. There’s a process of empathy and projection which helps draw you in.

And yet, no matter how many cameras you have pointing at your subject, isn’t there still something essentially unknowable about him?

We get to see him for 90 minutes, yet we don’t know how much we know. That was one of the great things for us.

Of course, what’s so tantalising here is that the opposite notion about portraiture also seems to hold true as well, that we can look at an image of a unique individual yet see a humanity we recognise as our own?

You have this moment where his smile really bowls you over, then a couple of minutes later there’s a complete breakdown, followed by anger and absolute remorse. It’s like the four faces of man inside 90 minutes. We always said to Zidane that it would be a psychological portrait as much as a visual one. The creation of the context also has a lot to do with the sounds, like hearing a children’s football game or an old French football commentator from his childhood, where it’s as if what we’re hearing is coming from inside his memory – all of which alters the sense of time and presence. That’s when we step outside the documentation of the game and step into the dimension of portraiture.

And in order to facilitate that aspect of portraiture, I gather you took the entire camera crew to the Prado on the morning before the game?

Yes, on a functional level, it helped explain to them the world that we’re coming from. And it certainly raised the pole, for instance, to have Martin Scorsese’s camera operator filming Zidane while thinking about Velasquez and Goya.

‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’ opens on Friday.

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