Pele: Needed some more depth

Cast: Vincent D’Onofrio, Rodrigo Santoro, Diego Boneta, Colm Meaney, Kevin de Paula

Rated: 6/10

Pele’s iconic stature cannot but make for a riveting watch on screen. His painfully poor childhood where he had to clean hospital toilets with his father, his ghettoed existence in Sao Paolo, his tragic loss of a friend and his uncertainties with his one and only love — football — should make a movie packed with events, emotions and sequences.

This part docu part film narrative on this brilliant footballer who fought against many odds, including poverty, to rise to the summit of the beautiful game falls a few inches short of its subject’s excellence. There was so much more it could have shown and explored so many more facets of the game and its worshipper than it does that you leave the hall wanting to be a little longer with Pele.

The film is caught between flashbacks of Pele’s difficult childhood and the 1958 World Cup where the Brazilian team is the underdog. It has players with physical deficiencies and with mental limitations of a tragic loss earlier. It is a team looked down upon by so-called “suave” whites from Europe. The film also raises the discrimination against the Brazilian flair personified in its “ginga” form of play. Tagged as primitive it is ostracised by not just the team’s coach but also the Brazilian administration.

Amid all this and more is 17-year-old Pele with his callowness enters the playing squad with other greater more established players down with injuries. The film deals more with Pele’s interactions with his father, his poverty, his mother’s existence as a house help and his early life. So the tone is dark and sad for most part. This brings us to the question why the film did not focus more on the actual game and Pele’s growth in it.

However, an arresting saga still. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 15 May, 2016