When I am not watching football, I like to watch films. You can blame this on SBS TV’s effect on a young curious teenager.
When SBS launched in 1980, not only did it bring the world of “world” football to Australian living rooms, it also brought the glorious world of cinema. Unlike the channel today, SBS really did bring the world back home.
The Les Murray – David Stratton tag team proved to be an irresistible combination. Murray’s World Soccer took me on a magic carpet ride to the San Siro, the Bernabeu, the Monumental. Stratton’s festivals of the great directors (Bunuel, Bergman, Fellini) introduced me to the cinema of the human condition and of the imagination.
Football and film have been an inextricable part of my life ever since.
Three decades later, the Socceroos are about to embark on their third successive World Cup appearance. Unlike many football fans, I am not too concerned about who they will meet at Brasil 2014 and I am also not that apprehensive about how they will perform.
This does not mean I am indifferent. I am, for want of a better word, just a bit more detached.
How did I get to be like this?
Answer: November 29, 1997.
As a 30-year-old, I was too young to comprehend Australia’s first appearance in the World Cup in 1974. I grew into adulthood yearning deeply for our next appearance. By 1997, all that yearning had become a massive, meteor-sized ball of expectation. The time had finally arrived.
You all know what happened next at the MCG. I won’t even bother linking a video. It is still too painful to watch.
How did I feel that night? How did many others feel that night?
This is the last scene of the last film from visionary Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky.
I am the utterly bewildered Alexander. The house, my World Cup dreams going up in smoke. I am surrounded by my fellow fans. The ambulance arrives to take me away.
It is a stunning piece of cinema.
Many people were scarred that night.
We did have our catharsis in 2005 and chances are the Socceroos will never have to endure a prolonged series of failed World Cup campaigns ever again. But the pain of 1997 will never quite go away. It is like a kernel permanently lodged in the deepest recesses of my mind.
Despite the balm of successive World Cup appearances I will never fully recover.
But I am probably a better football fan for it.
*Find out more about Tarkovsky’s final film, The Sacrifice, and the final scene here.
