Pele: Birth of a Legend

I was invited to the world premier of this film at the TriBeCa Film Festival, in New York. I say invited, as if my life is some sort of glamorous affair. In reality, a mate at work couldn't make it, and he knew I'd have no actual plans, so I eagerly obliged.

Just before the movie started, the 350 or so people in the audience got what they wanted, as the man himself stood up and raised his hand to the instagram happy crowd. Just knowing Pele was in the audience gave the room a little extra energy.

Perhaps a little naive, I knew a little about Pele's playing career but little of the man and, the journey to what he became. The film follows his early years with friends at home, up until he becomes 17 and plays for Brazil in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. There's enough humour, big laughs, drama, and passion in the film that will translate to fans familiar with the legend and those who may have only heard of him.

The real treat, were the applause, and cheering from the audience when the on-screen Pele scored. His hand went up in recognition and the cheers got louder. I was pleased that despite the film keeping my attention he may have nodded off, he's knocking on a bit.

I waited outside afterward and managed to get a signed Santos shirt from him, which kinda gave me goose pimples, and rammed home the magnitude of who this man was, and what he had done for the game. My dad would have been proud. Sadly the shirt is the guys from work, so I'm currently deciding whether to buy a replica shirt and say I didn't get it, or beginning to practice the man's signature! That's okay, isn't it...

I did snap a selfie. Insta - Jamesbydesign

Pelé: Birth of a Legend is an extraordinary movie, the tale of how Pelé became famous and won with Brazil their first world cup in the 1958 world cup in Sweden. This is probably the most successful movie that focuses on soccer. A true story of a boy with nothing who became the world's greatest soccer player. No famous actors in this film except for Vincent D'Onofrio. But the movie doesn't need famous actors to attract the attention of the viewers, it's beautiful story is what attracted me in the first place. Along with the music composed by A. R. Rahman That follows the emotion and scenes throughout the film. Pelé's legend is worth to be told and has a deep meaning to Brazil's history of soccer and hope of becoming the best. The movie is also a story of restoring honor and hope to a full nation. Only it is sad that today Brazil's soccer team can't be as great as it was back then. So this film brings a lot of nostalgia towards the past and a better hope for the future. I am hoping to see other movies about soccer like this one in the future, maybe a movie about Neymar or Messi.

Pele is one of the most spiritual sports movies I've ever seen and is more heart than anything else.

It's more about the pride of Brazil and Edson Arantes do Nascimento being a beautiful symbol of it.

Pele is a poor kid form a poor part of Brazil who was good enough to use football to start building a better life by being a part of the 1958 Olympic team. More to the story, is that from the place he is from , his father taught him the ginga, for the purpose of the movie, the ginga is a celebration of Brazil's African heritage focus through football, a system that most of Brazil feels lost them the last two Olympic games, but Pele realized they were not doing it right and shows them the path that leads to the gold and Brazilian pride.

The acting itself did not bring on this spirit, but I did like the acting. From the trailer, I was not sure if Vincent D'Onofrio could pull off the role as the team's coach, but indeed he does a find job. It's one of the few sports movies in which the coach's inspiration is a very small part of the movie, but D'Onofrio does well with the little he's got.

The spirit comes more in the film making itself , as they use small special effects like slow motion to make Pele look divine every time he gets the ball, inter cut with scenes of people watching in total ah of what he can do. At first it seems cheesy when they first start doing it, but after a while it gets into a rhythm that gets you into it, and you can't help but to let it touch your soul.

I don't think it's better or worse than any other sports movie. What makes it unique is that they're are very few of these about Soccer (and so many about American Football), but it does the trick of inspiring you and having you cheer for the underdog, though I feel I did not really learn much about Pele in the process.

I want to state first that I do really like Pélé, he is one of the best athletes in history, not only in his athletic performance but also in his conduct outside the pitch.

His compelling personality is well displayed and I cannot speak with certainty about his background, but I suspect that while it was challenging it was perhaps not quite as bad as it is displayed at times.

My main problem with the movie is the display of the national teams aside from the brazilians. It was at this time and unlike the depiction of the movie well known that Brazil was a good team, perhaps not the favorites to win, but by no means a complete underdog. The favorites to win were West Germany, France and the Soviet Union. Sweden who is antagonisticly depicted was a nation with many players at the very end of their career and though the population was excited at their nations participation and that for the first time (for the swedes) professional players playing in clubs abroad would be permitted to play for the national team. So people were hopeful that with homefield advantage and the addition of a handful of worldclass professionals though perhaps past their prime(Niels Liedholm 36 at the time and Gunnar Gren 38) that maybe possibly Sweden could win.

So the primary factual error here is that Brazil was by no means colossal underdogs and the Swedes were not as massively favored as depicted and certainly not as arrogant and demeaning as they are shown. Though there is some truth in their strategy in the final game, the swedes did hope to try and score an early goal hoping the brazilians would be unable to recover.(According to Niels Liedholm).

I also find it unfortunate that while racism is horrible and was certainly present even amongst my own swedish ancestors. It is very unfortunate that this media never depicted some of the really inspiring moments of people in this tournament. Because in the end Pélé have stated that the swedish king at the time went down to meet the players on both sides and shook everybodys hand and chatted with them regardless of what they looked like. For many people just like the king football have no color and whilst Péle has had to deal with his fair share of racism he has seldom dwelt on the negative, but almost always uplifted the positive.

For my parents who vividly remember this tournament and who have always held Pélé in very high regard as both a footballer and a person. It was rather difficult to swallow the depiction of his opponents(our national team in particular) and that of the tournament as a whole which is perhaps one of the most memorable world cups in history with Pélé the 17-year old wunderkind and Just Fontaine who set a record of scoring goals that to this day stands.

Like the excellent Kevin Costner film: "McFarland USA" this movie sensitively shows how sport can significantly alter a people's identity (in this case the entire nation of Brazil was uplifted from a sense of inferiority within the world community, to a pride in their own uniqueness). The acting is good. The sports action scenes are remarkable (how did they get an actor with such great soccer skills?) and the music is by the great A.R. Raman. A lot of care was put into the making of this film, but a lot was lost, I feel, by having the actors speak mostly in English. And it wasn't dubbed English, it was the Brazilian actors trotting out their heavily accented English. That had the effect of taking away much of the authenticity the film had worked so hard to achieve. (That the real-life Pelé has a cameo appearance - and thus takes the viewer out of the scene's intended verisimilitude - is, perhaps, excusable - I can cut it that slack). One more grumble: the movie trailers announced: "With Rodrigo Santoro". I will see anything with him in it - he is a terrific actor. But he appears for LITERALLY FIVE SECONDS! Really! That is unacceptable marketing...'bait and switch', actually. But see the movie anyway. (BTW, I met Pelé in 1984. We talked for about ten minutes, and at one point, after we had been briefly interrupted, he put his arm around me and said: "So, my Brazilian-American friend, where were we?" He had a golden air about him, and yet was completely down-to-earth even though we talked about cosmic reality. To listen to my five minute audio recording about meeting Pelé, search for "Pelé And His Brazilian- American Friend".