VERDICT: An ageing footballer reflects on his career in this layered rumination on the nature of the beautiful game adapted from the filmmaker’s own short story.
The protagonist of Adrian Duncan’s short film Prosinecki – and of the short story of the same name from which it is adapted – is an unnamed footballer in his mid-thirties, playing for an unnamed team in the north of England. While a teammate is treated for an injury, this player’s mind wanders back to his teenage years, his professional peak playing for a club in Germany, and to his childhood idol, the Croatian midfielder Robert Prosinecki. Using archive material and a mellifluous abridged narration of the story by Wendy Erskine, Duncan crafts an entrancing and affecting portrait of an individual and a thought-provoking meditation on the tension between pragmatism and aestheticism – in football and beyond.
The original story is an incredibly poignant one, as the footballer drifts off during a break in play to recall his time playing at the height of his powers in Germany some decade earlier, remembers advice given to him as a youth about to sign his first professional contract, and looks back on arrogant past actions in the light of attempting to emulate his hero. At this moment, he decides that his finest act – an outrageous piece of skill against a team from Dresden years previous, in which he humiliated an opponent – is in fact his greatest sin. Prosinecki had a reputation for flair but with age, the protagonist has come to realise he always made the moral decision; he chose the right pass in service of the game, not preening displays of unnecessary skill for adulation. In this sense, Prosinecki is held up by the player as a god – his alpha and omega, who was both the source of his youthful inspiration and his older, sober revelation.
The translation of this story to screen is via a montage primarily comprising grainy, slowed-down archival footage of Prosinecki playing for Red Star Belgrade sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. The footage inches forward in sometimes stilted fashion and is rewound to re-assess technique, or overlayed or convey infinite possibilities. Where slow motion often serves aesthetic alone, here it feels like it’s being deployed for a purpose – as if the footage is being manipulated by the protagonist during his childhood as he tries to unlock the secrets of Prosinecki’s ability. The match footage is also interrupted in certain moments by footage from riot police cajoling demonstrators, the fall of hazy factory chimneys, or ballet dancers on stage. In these brief interjections – as in the original story – the wider world subtly permeates the moment of reverie and the protagonist’s internal wranglings. Through this interplay, Prosinecki manages to be a fascinating rumination on the glorious contradictions of football both on the field and off it, the push and pull of form and function, and a profound depiction of someone wrestling with the legacy of the life they’ve lived.
Director, screenplay, editing: Adrian Duncan
Narration: Wendy Erskine
Sound design: Paul Pilot
Music: Ochre
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Short & Mid-length)
In English
21 minutes
