Good WaPo

Blake Gopnik writes a great review of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, a soccer film—"portraiture in its purest form"—that I tried my best but failed to catch at the Hirshhorn a week and a half ago. By "my best" I mean that I got there on time, expecting the usual handful of art wahoos that shows up for experimental film screenings. Instead there was a line stretching around the perimeter of the building. Moreover, this was a line for just the first viewing; the museum had already added a second, later show and distributed raincheck tickets for that. Oh, and the line? Full of soccer hooligans. Where are these people during the day, and what do they do when the World Cup isn't on? It was like a LeftBank happy hour had been relocated to the National Mall.

Gopnik's review is clear and informative, and he avoids a lot of traps he could have fallen into: lame soccer jokes or, worse, informed soccer references. But I must protest his self-effacing jab at "sport-ignorant art critics". Some of us are reeling today not just from the weekend's schedule of art-fair parties and gallery openings but from some devastating losses to the Golden State Warriors. I'm with Sir Charles—Golden State sounds like a place where they play a lot of soccer, damnit.

UPDATE: Yglesias saw the film and says it's sux0rz. One thing he mentions that Gopnik neglected to emphasize: Zidane muses metaphysically about soccer over the soundtrack of the film. I like Gordon's films, but that sounds intolerable.