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A Soccer Story
Machline Paulo Running Time: 22:01 min Viewer Rating: 8.85 Number of Views: 1,488 In this touching, Oscar-nominated short, an elderly man takes a nostalgic look back at the days of playing soccer in the streets of a small Brazilian town with his friends. Watch as an unforgettable match unveils one of the children who would later become a world legend in the sport of soccer: Pelé.
Above is all the information that IFilm provides (http://www.ifilm.com). But I can’t care less if it’s been nominated for the Oscars. To me, Oscars isn’t everything. In fact, I do believe it’s just a big, expensive popularity game that favors amiable, so-so stars to the detriment of the talented, reclusive ones. That said, I was fascinated with this short film for entirely its own merits. It’s amazing. It’s one of the rare ones that makes you believe in the power of cinema, or that cinema still has that power now that it’s been elevated to the status of (thanks to Hollywood) a vast, selfish marketplace teeming with movie moguls whose only God is profit. Of course, there are a few good ones every now and then—I am not discounting that (Schindler’s List, The Godfather, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, etc.). A Soccer Story starts by showing a few old pictures of a bunch of boys learning to excel in the soccer game. The film has a sepia tone hue to it all through out, which is a great approach for reminiscing things. The music helps a lot to set the mood as well. Then the camera begins to roll, showing you how the boys start off with all their handicaps intact, gradually discovering their own strengths such as who runs the fastest, or who stays in the game the longest. You tend to fall in love with the game again, although it’s World Cup counterpart has become as commercialized and as sophisticated as Hollywood. Here, the game is stripped to its barest necessities, even making you feel the mud or the dust as the game goes on. You feel the joy, the exhilaration of the boys who are really enjoying their childhood (not locked up in a big, dirty city where the back alley is the more interesting part). And so you become nostalgic and envious as well. You ask yourself: Where did my own childhood go? The part where Pele’s father listens to an old, worn out radio is especially touching. Here is where the young Pele swears that he’s gonna get his dad one of those goals—and of course he eventually does. But more than the father-son angle, the more touching angle is the friendship angle between Pele and his best friend, which, the film argues is the secret of Pele’s success. Go To Page: 1 2 |
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