Pelé: Birth of a Legend

The idea at the centre of this film is a style of play: ginga. Developed in Brazilian street football and futsal, swaying and improvisational, it was long dismissed as unserious, a defect measured against European discipline. The film builds Pelé's story around that argument: the boy is playing against poverty and against his own country's contempt for its own game. Ginga is dismissed as primitive by the old hands, and the coach Vicente Feola pushes his mixed-race squad away from it. The narrative starts with the injury that ended his father's career and runs to the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, where Pelé was seventeen and Brazil won their first title. Leonardo Lima Carvalho plays him as a child and Kevin de Paula as a young man, with Seu Jorge as his father and Vincent D'Onofrio as Feola. The directors are the brothers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, both from documentary; this was their first fiction feature. Who it is for: viewers who like sports biography and are curious about how a style of play becomes a national identity. Who it is not for: anyone expecting realism. The film follows the classic triumph template exactly, and that is the common thread in the criticism: it flattens the racial and economic dynamics sitting behind the story.