Movie: Pele: Birth of a Legend (Jeff Zimbalist & Michael Zimbalist, 2016)
Birth of a Legend presents Pele's life between 1950 (when as a kid in the favelas he experienced the heartbreak of Brazll losing the World Cup final on home soil to Urugualy) and 1958 (when he led Brazil to its first ever World Cup victory). It does so by combining dutiful Hollywoodised accuracy with artistic flourishes that happily distort reality, showing in the process that historic fiction is much more insightful when it does the latter than when it does the former. Everyone remotely interested in the World Cup will have seen archival footage of Pele's header in the 1958 final against Sweden. There is little added value in recreating it here, especially when the digital effects behind the recreation are so obvious. If you are going to show a fake football game you might as well go all the way and warp time and space to highlight how Pele's genius is a direct expression of his experiences as a poor, black Brazilian.
The central confilct is between Pele and Jose Altafini, the white star of Brazil who believes that the national team should model itself after Italy. When Altafini gets injured in the final stages of the 1958 tournament, he is replaced by Pele who shows that the 'joga bonito', with its origins in capoeira, the forbidden dance of Braulian slaves, is the way to go for Brazil, on and off the pitch. No, Pele didn't regularly stop mid-action 'to think about his entire life" before playing on, but a conceit being common doesn't necessarily make it unsophisticated. These in-game flashbacks, present a tension between the African and European elements in Brazil's culture that's much more unsettled and complex than the tidily resolved friction between Pele and Altafini, or the Disneyfied change of heart by coach Vicente Feola. In the locker room before the final he gives a speech to his players asking them to forget about his 'European' tactics and to just play with 'Brazilian ginga'. There is a difference between arguing that Brazilians need freedom to express themselves on the field and arguing that Brazilians get confused when they have to think about overlapping fullbacks, but sometiems you just gotta comfort those who need to believe that even the most accomplished non-Westerners are in fact noble savages. It's an idea that the film had been actively resisting until then, and to make it more disappointing it's set up by its best moment
The day before the final, the Brazilians are having diner in a posh hotel in Stockholm. Their trainings have gone badly, they have been insulted as 'subnormal' by tthe Swedish coach, and are now expected to perform 'Swedish' civility. But far away in the garden next to the restaurant there is a lighthouse, reminding Pele to adapt a game they played in the favelas: "to the lighthouse, no bounce". The whole team should get to the designed spot passing the ball to each other without it ever touching the ground. Their movement filmed with an intoxicating energy that's contrasted by the sterile environment of the hotel, and it plays like a contemporary Nike commercial, placing the Brazilians far ahead of their time. It's the one time in the film, Brazil is presented as the center of the world and of 'modernity'. The scene is as outrageous an invention as Pele's on-field memories of his youth, but in many ways is a better expression of the historical context than most of the scenes that purport to stick to the facts. Part of the problem is that the film suffers from presentism and sees the World Cup as a far bigger, and more legacy-defining event than it was at the time. You wouldn't know if from the commentary here, but before 1958 the World Cup had only been held 5 times, and had only three different winners: West Germany, Italy and Uruguay. I can't tell you a single player from any of those teams, and the oldest World Cup goal I've seen is Pele's header in the 1958 final. Technological developments played a role here certainly (it's a nice touch that for the 1950 final everyone in Pele's village is gathered around a radio. By 1958 they are watching it on a small television), but in alignment with Pele. The film's gravest mistake is that it presents this as an underdog story of a man made a legend by the World Cup, without ever fully realising that Pele was the first to make the World Cup legendary.
