BRAZIL: Pele Loses – on the Big Screen

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Aug 2 2004 (IPS) - It is impossible for a football fan not to be impressed by “Pelé eterno” (Eternal Pelé), a documentary showing more than 300 goals, surprise moves and triumph after triumph -û as well as a few misses – by the best Brazilian player of all time.

It is impossible for a football fan not to be impressed by “Pelé eterno” (Eternal Pelé), a documentary showing more than 300 goals, surprise moves and triumph after triumph -û as well as a few misses – by the best Brazilian player of all time.

But the film did not draw the expected crowds. A month after release it was clear it would have difficulty even reaching the total of 300,000 movie-goers – a box-office return which does not reflect the popularity of the “athlete of the century” in a country of 180 million packed with fans.

Showings started with 150 copies of the film, an exceptionally large distribution for a documentary but in keeping with the producers’ expectations. The average 338 spectators for each copy over the first few days was a disappointment to director, Aníbal Massaini, who has 31 feature films to his name.

Frustration grew when audiences shrank to just half that, leading cinema managers to remove “Pelé eterno” from many theatres. In Porto Alegre, capital of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul with more than a million people, only one cinema was screening it last week, relegated to a single showing at the off-peak hour of 1:30 in the afternoon.

Explanations are varied. Women refuse to watch a film on football, young people are not as keen on Pelé as their parents were, and while the older generation admire the player on the field they rarely go out to the movies.

“Some women do like football, even on the screen,” countered a woman in Porto Alegre who saw the film on Jul. 27, although she added that her friends complained it was too long. This was also the spontaneous complaint of a 10-year-old girl, who went to see the film with another girl and two boys of the same age.

So a full 125 minutes celebrating Pelé’s skills seem to be too much even for those who are fans but are not so passionate about football that they admire every detail of his feints and headers, his ability to handle the ball equally well with both feet, and his incredible jumps. In short: ballet with a ball.

The great merit of the film is the recovery of many images never seen before in the country, providing the most complete collection ever on the footballer’s career. Some of Pelé’s “masterpieces” on the field – which were never actually caught on film – were recreated with digital reconstruction or simulated by actors.

As it is, Massaini had to cut a lot of material to get the film down to just over two hours, and these clips will be used to produce a DVD and a TV series at least four episodes long. The producers hope this will help them recover the 1.8 million dollars poured into the film.

The storyline is conventional, linear. It narrates the life of the player from childhood to the end of his career, when he “exported football”, making the game popular in the United States, playing on the Cosmos team from 1975 to 1977.

In order to show the genius of the “king of football,” as well as the cups and championships in which he triumphed, the film breaks down sequences of head goals, shots made equal skill by both his right and left feet, feints, his sudden sprints and even his sly way of getting his own back on opponents who used undue violence to contain him.

It is a film which accumulates evidence of why he is considered a magician and even a semi-god on the football pitch: someone capable of scoring 36 goals in the first tournament he played – the Sao Paulo state championship – when he was 16-years-old, and beating this the following year, with 58 goals in 38 games.

“It is a pleasure to see so many goals, his beautiful plays and moves,” Guilherme Zingano, a 21 year-old P.E. student told IPS, lamenting that football today is “closed in, with heavy marking, no freedom” and that all the best players have gone to Europe to earn more money.

Pelé refused to leave Santos, the only club he played for from 1956 to 1974.

“I want to be like Pelé,” said Mateus Zetterman, the nephew Zingano took to see the film. Mateus attends a club where he is learning to play football, and the film did not seem too long to him, even though he is only eight-years-old.

The disappointing box office returns of “Pelé eterno” appear to confirm the opinion of those who consider film incompatible with football, and who claim documentaries will never attract crowds like feature films.

Only in this decade have documentaries started to be screened commercially in the country, and their production has multiplied. But few bring in more than 100,000 spectators.

The ceiling of 250,000 spectators may perhaps be surpassed by “Fahrenheit 9/11,” the U.S. documentary by Michael Moore opening in Brazil in the next few days, after millions went to see the controversial film in the United States.

So betting on Pelé’s mythological popularity was a mistake. Football-lovers prefer to see the sport on the pitch, and make up a different audience than those who go to the cinema.

It is clear that cinema will still have to innovate a lot and develop some unshown talent if it wants to exploit the popularity of football, which is nearly a religion in this South American country.