Fallen god

Diego Maradona, Asif Kapadia’s take on the poor boy from the slums of Buenos Aires who became a footballing god, is gripping if heartbreaking. It’s one of those scenarios where a stunning natural talent is exploited rather than protected. He even put me in mind of Judy Garland (minus the large and devoted gay following). But for all that, it is not wholly satisfying and it sent me scurrying to Wikipedia. What happened to his marriage? What were his ties with the mafia exactly? Plus, from what I read there, was he also a bit of a shit?

Kapadia is an exceptional documentarian and, as with his previous films, Senna and Amy, he does not employ talking heads or any of that. Instead, it’s archive footage or television snippets or personal videos all shaped to tell a story while the interviewees are kept off camera, with only their voices heard. On this occasion he had 2,000 hours of footage that had to be whittled down to two hours, so it’s understandable that elements are missing.