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Review: ‘Diego Maradona’ is a Full-Fleshed Portrait of the Controversial Footballer
Asif Kapadia’s documentary captures the Argentinian midfielder in his entirety, from the hand of God to the lows of addiction
While his work as a narrative filmmaker may leave much to be desired (if the reputation of 2024’s 2073 is anything to go by, at least), filmmaker and documentarian Asif Kapadia can be a master craftsman. Most have found the proof of this in his landmark 2015 documentary Amy, a study of Amy Winehouse’s rise to musical fame and glory before her downfall into drug addiction until her untimely death in 2011, but I always found that that film felt a little too safely constructed. It’s an impressive feat to bring such a staggering amount of footage together to craft a meaningful, touching story that doesn’t actually feel all too different from traditional narrative filmmaking, but Amy never grabbed me as it did the majority of its audiences for one reason or another — mostly on the basis that its style felt too familiar, too tame to represent a musician who was forever battling the expectations of the time in which she became such a star.
Kapadia instead held me hostage with his absolutely brilliant Senna (2010), focused on the Brazilian racer Ayrton Senna, his time as a Formula…
