Infinite Football (2018) is a slow-moving, dialogue-driven character study of Laurențiu Ginghină, a Romanian bureaucrat who spends his leisure time attempting to revolutionise football. The director, Corneliu Porumboiu, interviews him in various locations and scenarios, chatting to him about his personal history and his efforts to redefine football’s rules; there are a few other people involved in the 70-minute documentary but essentially it is a two-hander.

Over the film's length Ginghină describes how he was injured playing football in 1986, resulting in life-changing injuries to his leg. Prompted by this he began to tinker with the rules of football, obsessively by all accounts, and throughout Infinite Football we see these rule changes evolving and growing ever more complicated. Ginghină cuts off the corners of the pitch to make it oval, and then divides the pitch into different zones, with different players allowed in different spaces; later he considers implementing new rules governing passing. In perhaps the most engaging scene of the documentary, Ginghină puts his rules into practice with some indoor players; discussing it with their coach, he is told that his game is nothing new, merely a recognised training exercise. It shows a disconnect with reality, an obsession with rules and systems that has developed tunnel vision. These themes are picked out and detailed in the accompanying booklet; the notion of Ginghină having a mindset still anchored in the communist Romania of the past, where any problems in life require a systemic approach and solution. In this case, Ginghină’s injury, resulting from shielding the ball against a wall and then being kicked by an opponent, sowed the seed for a new vision of football that minimises contact and aggression, and prioritises the free movement of the ball. Ginghină’s vision is thus apparently entirely selfish and self-obsessed.

Infinite Football doesn’t portray this in colourful Herzog-esque terms, but rather in a very flat, unadorned manner - though the film does end with a long shot along a road as a voiceover from Ginghină discusses the nature of good - and this is really the very obvious criticism of the documentary: despite the interesting themes embedded within - rules, freedom, personal responsibility, obsession - the film itself is largely deathly boring. Or rather it is not an entertaining or pleasurable experience. Perhaps this is apt, as a portal into the grinding obsessive formalities of Ginghină’s mind, but it leads to a Crass-esque scenario where I advise you to keep the booklet and bin the blu-ray itself.  

Infinite Football is accompanied by the 2014 film The Second Game, a curious documentary where Porumboiu and his father watch and narrate a grainy VHS tape of a 1988 football game - with the twist being that Porumboiu’s father, Adrian, was the referee of the match. The game, a 0-0 draw between the two great Romanian rivals Dynamo Bucharest and Steaua Bucharest, is played out to a high standard in essentially blizzard conditions on a rapidly deteriorating pitch. The Porumboiu’s discuss the sometimes precarious position of the referee, with both teams having attempted to influence Adrian Porumboiu before the match, as well as the role of the referee on the pitch, with philosophical undertones and resonances. They discuss Adrian’s tendency to play the advantage in the game, to let it flow, and this has obvious echoes of Ginghină’s preoccupations. Truth be told, The Second Game is much less engaging than Infinite Football; it reminds me of something I might see at a conceptual art exhibition - in a bad way. The disc is filled out with two interviews with Corneliu Porumboiu, one of which is an interview proper, the other a public Q&A, both of which give insights into his intentions, and the themes of his work - as well as wider thoughts on football as a cultural phenomenon.

It’s difficult to recommend this as something to watch; the ideas in Infinite Football, and to a lesser extent The Second Game, are interesting, engaging, and fundamental, but I found the films themselves hard going. I think perhaps reading the booklet through first before viewing would have helped, but I genuinely got very little from watching the film itself. I’m not suggesting that art needs to be accessible or signposted - I certainly listen to and watch any amount of ‘difficult’ material - but the film didn’t encourage me to engage with it. If I react badly to something I’m reviewing I’ll sometimes idiot-check myself afterwards by gaining a sense of the general opinion, and the general opinion is that Infinite Football is rather great; I agree that the ideas and themes are incredibly compelling, but my interaction with the actual material of the venture, the film itself, was not.