Diego Maradona is constructed from over 500 hours of never-before-seen footage from Maradona's personal archive with the full support of the man himself. On 5th July 1984, Diego Maradona arrived in Naples for a world-record fee. For seven years all hell broke loose. The world's most celebrated football icon and the most passionate but dangerous city in Europe were a perfect match for each other. On the pitch, Diego Maradona was a genius. Off the pitch, he was treated like a God. The charismatic Argentine loved a fight against the odds and led Napoli to their first-ever title. It was the stuff of dreams. But there was a price... Diego could do as he pleased while performing miracles on the pitch but, as time passed, darker days closed in.
As I mentioned in yesterday's review of The Keeper, sports are not really my preferred type of entertainment; movies and music are more my kinds of thing. As such, I had never heard of Diego Maradona before. To that regard, I would not be able to talk about the accuracy of the documentary. I can only talk about how well the piece worked, to someone with no prior knowledge of the person being portrayed.
This is yet another case where the trailer does not create a tone that is consistent with the tone of the documentary as a whole. From watching the trailer alone, I was intrigued at the story of a man that works his way up from the slums to become a football god, who then gets caught up in the wrong crowd and becomes a gangster. That sounds like an incredibly thrilling story. While Maradona is an interesting documentary, the second half is definitely not what the trailer would lead you to believe. In fact, the whole pacing that the trailer displays is inconsistent with that of the full feature.
Let's ignore the trailer and just look at the documentary itself. One of the important aspects of a documentary is the narrative direction. A person's life has many facets and events, and it is important to decide on what category of aspects to focus on when doing a documentary. Maradona focuses on the duality of Diego Maradona's character during his time playing for the Italian football team, Naples (Napoli), between 1984 and 1992.
While football is a major part of the documentary, it's clear that while it drives the narrative forward, it isn't what director Asif Kapadia is interested in. Instead, the film looks at how the sport changed who Diego Maradona was as a person, to the point that many people close to him would refer to him by his two vastly different personalities. 'Diego' was the loving family-man, timid and humble, whereas 'Maradona' was the mask he wore in public; the confident, narcissistic, showboating personality. Maradona is the story of a man who loved to play soccer and wanted nothing more than to win games and to live a peaceful life with his family. Unfortunately, his life in Naples was intertwined with the success of the Napoli soccer team, which left him at the mercy of public perception.
A mix of archive footage and audio from later interviews, Kapadia creates a cohesive narrative that--thanks to the balance of audio--creates an incredibly immersive experience. Something that needs to be viewed on the big screen, you can feel every time the boot connects with the ball, you can feel the feverish fanatical atmosphere that the Neapolitan public created, and you can feel the claustrophobia and emotional isolation that plagued Diego Maradona. Creating a well-structured and engaging narrative is important and is well-executed here.
A brilliant example of the brutality of public perception, Diego Maradona's fall from grace is incredibly tragic. One could try to say his own behaviour led to the outcome that he got, but he was a man trapped in his circumstance, whose life completely changed after one fateful football match.