This Is Football

A documentary mini-series that, based on its title, trailer or theme song, you could (rightfully) dismiss as another standard ostentatious celebration of football. You know, a huge amount of such things (not only “by FIFA") will always come before the World Cup. Well, appearances can be deceiving. And that is exactly the case here. This is related to football documentaries in the same way that one unnamed quarterly for football culture is related to the Czech Deník Sport newspaper or the magazines Hattrick and Pro Football. Rather, it is a celebration of the power of football (even considerable emotions will come up), but from a completely different perspective and in a completely different way. Each episode is a separate documentary about an hour long; one is about the role of football (e.g. Liverpool) in Rwanda during/after the genocide, another is set in Japan after the tsunami from the perspective of the female national team, an an episode about outsiders who  unexpectedly shock the world. Then there are episodes about the miracle from Iceland and about Messi, which is probably closest to what one would expect from it based on the misleading trailer or the horrible theme song. However, it can still surprise you. The production values are large-format, so this would be watchable even on the big screen. The snag, however, is the music, which in some moments (mostly introducing drone shots) is so inadequately monumental or, conversely, so bitter that it is clearly annoying. Other scenes that I found annoying are when someone, while thinking back to a crucial match, shows their reactions to the course of the given match (shaking their head when the opponent scores, etc.). These are indecently cheap sentimental flashes. And then there's another cheap shot: if a doctor is being questioned, he is wearing a medical uniform, if it's a safari guide, then he is wearing a safari-guide uniform, etc. There is no reason for that. In the final part, however, the best that can be written about it is that it is so fascinating and full of strong stories that it works perfectly, even if you have zero interest in football. (14.08.2019)