The film about Maradona that’s not about Maradona
THE HAND OF GOD turns an infamous goal into a sweeping, semi-autobiographical love letter to adolescence
FOR ENGLAND FANS, Diego Maradona is best known for the ‘hand of God’: the phrase he used to describe his disputed goal against England that led Argentina to their 1986 World Cup quarterfinal win. For fans of SSC Napoli, Maradona is a god-like figure who turned around the fortunes of the club and city. For Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, he was all that — and more.
“Maradona saved my life,” Sorrentino says, earnestly.
“Maybe by coincidence.
Maybe because of religious stuff.” He’s not being metaphorical. When
Sorrentino was 16, he travelled to Tuscany to watch Maradona play for Naples.
His parents stayed at home, where an accidental carbon monoxide leak killed them both; had Sorrentino not made the pilgrimage to see his hero, he would have died, too. “The movie says exactly this.”
The movie is The Hand Of God, Sorrentino’s ninth and most personal film; the title poetically takes the name of that cheeky handball and extrapolates divine intervention, with a semifictionalised version of the filmmaker (played by newcomer Filippo Scotti) also experiencing the death of his parents — but not before we hear Maradona’s name chanted throughout the streets of Naples, his 1980s arrival in the city generating unprecedented excitement. He was, Sorrentino says, always more than a footballer.
“He was very important at that time for our city,” Sorrentino explains. “In the early ’80s, Naples was a city stressed economically by an earthquake. There was a war between the criminal gangs. The Neapolitan people were scared to go out in the evening. There was a dark environment, and the coming of Maradona was a sort of liberation for us. I was 14 years old when he arrived in 1984. Football changed our perception of life.” Though only occasionally glimpsed on
TV screens in the background, the footballer is all over The Hand Of God, from the title and beyond. “For me, he was a big inspiration,” Sorrentino continues, “because I grew up in a family where there were not books or cinema. Maradona was my first opportunity to be in contact with something that looks like a heart.” The intense passion, joy and heartbreak associated with the player inspired Sorrentino to explore filmmaking as a career, as also seen with the proxy character in the film. “It was probably my first inspiration to become a director, what was happening every Sunday on the field.”
After Bacchanalian delights The Great Beauty and Loro, this finds the director in a more introspective mood. Although he’s not sure how effective it is as therapy. “I will find out in the future,” he says with a smile. “For many years, all my pain was a sort of personal monologue I did with myself. It was probably a good idea to share this pain with other people.” There is one person he wasn’t able to share it with, though: Maradona died while editing on the film was still underway. “It’s my big regret,” Sorrentino says, “because my dream was to show him the movie [when it was complete].” Would he have appreciated it? “I love to think so.” THE HAND OF GOD IS IN SELECT CINEMAS FROM 3 DECEMBER AND ON NETFLIX FROM 15 DECEMBER