I just found out today that my great grandmother was 16 years younger than my great grandfather. 1895 vs 1909. He was on the run from the in-Italy Italian mafia, left a wife and family there, married in Canada and left a wife and family there, then came down to the USA and started my branch of the tree. He had an odd funeral.

I’m not sure when my Great Grandmother immigrated, but she would’ve been 20 when the Great Depression hit. And because it was post WWI Germany, she was probably not in a good place fiscally.

So Imagine.

You come to America, some year very close to the beginning of the Depression. Maybe to find a job, maybe to find a husband with citizenship* and you meet this nearly 40 year old man and marry him. And then he proceeds to forbid you from ever speaking German again. Any mention of your original culture gets punished. My family has no known German traditions**.

By 25 you have two daughters that your husband has terrorized so much that both rush into marriages rather than have to live by their father’s rules a second longer. The first marries relatively well, the second marries my grandfather.

Your husband dies at age 76, which isn’t bad for someone who was born in the 1800s. He has a joint headstone, one that will tie your bodies together until your bones rot and the stones erode. But you’re 60 and don’t live with either of your daughters. Maybe because those years of terror in your house. Maybe because of shame. I don’t know. But my grandmother converts to Catholicism because her religious upbringing “… felt so empty and she liked the ceremony inherent to that faith.” (-my mother). You don’t spend much time with your grandchildren.

Your second baby has several miscarriages, several successful pregnancies, and then a living grandchild dies in an accident. Did moving here really help your descendants? She adopts two children and gives birth to my mother within a few months of your grandson’s death, and a few years later, my aunt. They’re your only granddaughters. By all accounts, she is never the same again.

Then your first baby dies. She’s 46 and living in America and has everything you could have ever wanted for her. But she dies slowly and painfully from cancer. Were you around to comfort her and her two sons as she slipped away? You were certainly alive then, but I don’t know.

Your second baby loses her husband, my grandfather, a few years later, and her family struggles financially, hundreds of miles away. She marries again, and divorces the jerk quickly after. You’re 71, is there much you can do?

In the same year, your youngest grandchild is 12 and you become a great grandmother. Do you meet this child? She’s the daughter of one of the adopted sons, does this matter to you?

You die at 79, in 1988. Germany is still split from a war you never saw. You’ve spent more life in this strange land than you ever did there. People come to America more and more in planes, not boats. Your granddaughter tells her daughter that she went to your funeral but only ever spoke to you once or twice. There’s a picture of you standing on American docks for the first time but no one knows where it is. And you’re buried under an American spelling of your name, next to that old bastard that you married.

It’s 2003 and America is convinced it’s having the worst time ever. Your second daughter works herself to the bone and dies before age 70. She worked herself to the bone. Most of her grandchildren met her, but few have memories. She and I were apparently best friends, but seeing as I was 2, I don’t remember her now. Your eldest granddaughter, my mother, is going through a rough divorce to a man who immigrated to America by accident***. A very different immigrant story to yours. In that same year, your first great-grandchild has a son.

Three years later, she marries and has a son with a Black man. Your youngest great-grandchild. Your daughter would have loved him, and her husband would have not. Would you have cared? You left Germany right around when the Nazis came to power. Would he just be one more baby to love?

17 years later, it’s 2023, and your eldest granddaughter has a rough day, so she visits her mother’s grave. Both of your daughters are buried nearby, perhaps closer in death to you than in life. She finds your grave, and realizes the age difference between you and your husband for the first time. She shares this information with her daughter.

Me. And now I’m posting on the internet while I lay in bed, avoiding my studies. I wonder if you knew this, would you still make the same choices? Would you feel that it was worth it? Would my fate, so tangential to yours, be precious enough that you would feel compelled to do this all again?

*(I think my mom mentioned she married quickly once she arrived but I’m not sure. She might have been a mail-order bride)

**to be fair, he also really tried to acclimatize to American culture, and only allowed English to be spoken in his house, and raised his kids Protestant, but my family still makes Italian food occasionally, sooooo I doubt that rule was equally enforced.

***My English grandparents divorced and my grandfather eventually moved to America. My dad and, at the time, his only siblings, came over to visit because America was still considered to be pretty cool. He was 13. My Nanny wanted more alimony, so she tried to do a fake out and telegraphed my grandfather to ‘keep the kids’. My Grandad called her bluff and kept the kids.

My Dad was very lucky this worked out for him. He gets away with a lot of things because he’s English in the USA

Diego Maradona (2019, United Kingdom)

You may know Asif Kapadia as the director of the biographical documentaries Senna (2010; Brazilian Formula 1 racer Ayrton Senna) and Amy (2015; English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse). Both Senna and Winehouse died in tragic circumstances, their legends remaining incomplete for many. For his third film in an informal trilogy of documentaries on early fame, its corrosiveness, and the public’s role in celebrity culture, Kapadia decided to challenge himself by profiling a living figure. Argentinian soccer star Diego Maradona is often considered one of the greatest to have ever played the Beautiful Game. Though it has been more than twenty years since Maradona kicked a ball in a competitive match, his legend and personality have loomed over his fellow countryman – and my personal choice for the best active footballer – Lionel Messi. Kapadia’s documentary does not cover the entirety of Maradona’s career. Instead, it focuses on Maradona’s time at S.S.C. Napoli (“Napoli” will be used to refer to the club and the city interchangeably and, sometimes, simultaneously) and his participation at the 1986 and 1990 FIFA World Cups. These are the years, Kapadia posits, that formed the myth of Maradona, and the role of Neapolitans and Italians in creating and later rejecting that myth.

Glossed over are Maradona’s early career in Argentina (boyhood club Argentinos Juniors and Boca Juniors) and his turbulent time at F.C. Barcelona (plagued with injuries and ended when he instigated a brawl against victorious Athletic Bilbao after the 1984 Copa del Rey final). Already established as one of the best players in the world, Maradona’s dribbling ability, unpredictable acceleration, and goalscoring prowess attracted renown and stoked fear in any defender with their back towards the goalmouth. Though unquestionably dedicated to the sport and assiduous in training, Maradona could not shake off questions about his personal life. His reputation as a hard partier followed him from Catalonia to Napoli. Napoli, after surviving a relegation scrap in Serie A during the 1983-84 season, was a club desperate to escape its trappings as a perennial middling club with infrequent success. With Maradona, then-club President Corrado Ferlaino saw an opportunity to challenge the “Northern Giants”: Juventus, A.C. Milan, and Inter Milan.

What makes Diego Maradona intriguing to soccer fans and people who do not know the difference between a corner kick and a goal kick is twofold. First is its take on how the Maradona came to be an embodiment of Neapolitans and, more broadly, southern Italy. Second – and this extends beyond Maradona’s playing career – is the relationship between a celebrity and their adoring or loathing public. More on the latter shortly, as Maradona’s connection to Neapolitans sociologically leads to celebrity.

Since Italy’s unification in 1861, northern and southern Italy have been culturally and socioeconomically divided. The breadth and source of those divisions are numerous and cannot be sufficiently listed in this simple film review. In short, northern Italy is wealthy, cosmopolitan, industrial, a tech hub, capitalist, attractive to internal and external immigrants, trusting of regional and national government. Southern Italy is poorer, provincial, agrarian, suffering from high rates of emigration, more religious, more family-oriented, less trusting of regional and national government (for legitimate reasons), and is the operational center of the nation’s mafia organizations. The images and testimonies in this documentary are colored by this divide. With his father’s partial Native American descent and impoverished background, what made Maradona a folk hero to Neapolitans were his ruggedness, sheer force of hardscrabble will, and rebelliousness against the footballing establishment. It is also what made him despised among Ultras of the Northern Giants, that a player of his caliber dare sign for a southern upstart. When Maradona joined Serie A, hooliganism in European soccer was a blight on the sport. An excerpt of a chant sung by Juventus’ Ultras would be banned in today’s Serie A, but the hatred is evident:

Even the dogs run too, the Neapolitans are coming. Sick with cholera. Victims of the earthquake. You never washed with soap. Napoli shit! Napoli cholera! You are the shame of the whole of Italy.

Using Maradona’s words – there are no contemporary talking heads in Kapadia’s film, only archival or audio-only interviews are used – he noticed, every time Napoli traveled to northern away games, that the team and their supporters were subject to racist behavior by the home fans. Perhaps playing with a chip on one’s shoulders is not the best way for an athlete to perform at their best, but Kapadia’s film argues that this propelled Maradona to be as great a player as he became. The public pressure and spectacle placed upon Maradona was immense. Think Beatlemania, but more localized and foisted upon one person, and that may be a merely adequate description of how Neapolitans viewed their sporting hero. Kapadia and editor Chris King (Kapadia’s two prior documentaries, 2010’s Exit Through the Gift Shop) splice together images of Maradona’s playing career, off-field shenanigans, and heartwarming moments with his family with astounding purpose. It might have been easy to start from the beginning, describing Maradona’s simple beginnings and the family that raised him. That Kapadia and King decide to begin with Maradona’s introduction to Napoli fans and the inconsistent first season – still better than a relegation scrap – provides a shot of adrenaline to start the film. Yes, this momentum is somewhat lost when they then resort to describing Maradona’s upbringing after completing the first season. Nevertheless, Maradona’s background is followed immediately by images and accounts of northern hostility – this structure provides a rawer illustration of the north-south divide through sport. And given southern Italy’s mafia presence, it makes the perfect transition into the elements that led to Maradona’s downfall in Napoli.

That downfall, of course, would not occur for another several years and well after Maradona led Argentina to win the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico – a victory that, characteristically for Maradona, attracted controversy and solidified his reputation, internationally, as one of the sport’s magicians and as a shameless cheater. My apologies to readers from England and Germany for whatever unwanted memories you have been reminded of. The prelude to the troubles that would follow come from one of Maradona’s most trusted confidants, personal trainer Fernando Signorini (also served as fitness coach for the Argentinian national team when Maradona served as head coach at the 2010 FIFA World Cup), who sees the past – and probably the present, too – Maradona as someone who had to adopt separate personas to become the greatest footballer of his era:

Diego was a kid who had insecurities, a wonderful boy. Maradona was the character he had to come up with in order to face the demands of the football business and the media. Maradona couldn’t show any weakness. One day I told him that with Diego I would go to the end of the world, but with Maradona I wouldn’t take a step.

Maradona himself admits this reality. The film agrees with Signorini and Maradona’s beliefs that the latter would not be as legendary a footballer as he was without “Maradona.” In becoming the savior of Napoli, Neapolitans clamored for Maradona’s attention – from those unable to afford tickets to attend matches to his friendship with Carmine Giuliano of the Giuliano clan of the Nuova Famiglia. With fans and the media’s excessive demands for on-the-field performance and availability, near-religious fervor for the club’s messiah, and rumors (and realities) of Maradona’s infidelity, the Giulianos provided an outlet from the cameras and microphones being shoved in his personal space. That outlet was cocaine. Maradona became dependent on the mafia for his fix, to help him escape the emotional and psychological pain life in Napoli had brought.

His addiction would not be the sole reason for his fall from grace but, by the end of his time there, the Neapolitan fans had discarded him as quickly as they anointed them his savior. Shunned, ostracized, and regarded as having turned his back on what made him so popular, the place where he had become one of the best soccer players ever wanted nothing more to do with him, let alone help him conquer the personal demons that had infected his soul. One moment at a Christmas party, only a few months before his departure from Napoli, captures Maradona staring emptily at nothing, as people carouse around him. The camera fixates on his blank face; Kapadia has the sound decrescendo to nothing. It is unsettling filmmaking. Maradona knows the end is near, and that he will have to answer for his decisions sooner than when he will be ready.

Kapadia’s penchant for messy, dramatic public figures made him well-suited to tackle Diego Maradona. The documentary’s non-match footage is pieced together from passages of an aborted behind-the-scenes documentary that began production in 1981 – half of the film stock was lying in Napoli; the rest gathering dust in the Buenos Aires home of Maradona’s ex-wife. Diego Maradona might not be revelatory to any Italian or Argentinian who has memories watching the diminutive superstar terrorize defenses live or on grainy ‘80s television sets. Some details – including Maradona’s demands for a transfer away from Napoli in the summer of 1990, the traumas of Maradona’s self-declared lack of responsibility to his illegitimate son, and how a single-minded desire to provide for his parents and siblings – surface at select times in the film, only to be mentioned fleetingly near the conclusion. But noting that is based on a life still not withdrawn from the spotlight, that may be excused.

In an interview with Roger Bennett, Kapadia describes his subject as the bridge between the black-and-white television era of Pelé and the online-fueled (but, when compared to Maradona, tightly guarded) present of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Maradona, who consented to a wide-ranging in-person interview with Kapadia, is as introspective in his commentaries as he has ever been. Here, he can be Diego, fully cognizant of his vices and the suffering he has caused to his family and friends. But in public, such as his brazen display in the stands during Argentina’s Round of 16 World Cup match versus Nigeria in 2018, he must be Maradona the character.

No matter the era, Maradona has always been an entertaining subject – modern footballers are more sanitized due to the now-constant scrutiny of social media and 24/7 sporting news networks (those like Zlatan Ibrahimović are endangered exceptions) – even in quieter moments. Perhaps, noting the psychological wreckage Maradona reckons with even today, this Argentinian’s story, by way of Spain and Italy, is a warning to fans and professional footballers alike. Do sporting fans understand the consequences when they declare their heroes as living gods? And why can it be so easy to dispose of these allegedly infallible celebrities? The answers, if there are any in this film, are not easy to find. Even Kapadia himself will not draw simple conclusions, knowing that the myth of Maradona persists, evangelized by no less than the soccer superstar himself.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.