ZIDANE: A 21st Century Portrait is a film for purists, either of cinematography or of soccer. Such people will be intoxicated. Anyone else risks being bored witless. This is an arthouse rendering of a Spanish league match between Real Madrid and Villareal. In real time. Seventeen high-definition cameras are fixed exclusively on the brilliant Frenchman, Zinedine Zidane, perhaps the most effortlessly graceful footballer of all time. The shots are stunning. The sound deserves an Oscar. The plot is absent.

But the themes are not, at least to the extent one is prepared to find them. Zidane's focused stoicism, particularly as presented here, provides a window onto the sporting soul.

And what a contaminated soul it presently appears. Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer has just been murdered after his team's diabolical World Cup loss to Ireland. Precisely why is uncertain, but most suspect a connection with sports gambling, just as they did when Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar was shot repeatedly after having conceded a decisive own goal in the 1994 World Cup. Meanwhile, several AFL footballers have been shamed for gambling transgressions of their own, and it has emerged that a quarter of the West Coast Eagles list has used illicit drugs. Ben Cousins, one of the league's most glamorous and talented stars needs Hollywood-style rehabilitation. And now, even the axiomatically spotless Ian Thorpe stands suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs. These are dark days indeed. No longer is the sporting conversation dominated by form slumps and hamstrings but drug use and murder.

To watch Zidane is to see a man singularly in his element. It is to be struck by his uncompromised focus. He barely speaks. He is not demonstrative towards his teammates. His movements are efficiently minimalist. His facial expression does not change, even when a flash of his own peerless genius creates an equalising goal.

It becomes possible to understand entirely how so many sports stars — Gary Ablett, Shane Warne, now Ben Cousins — can exhibit complete control on the field, yet be such wrecks off it. The game exists in a parallel universe for such people. They retreat to a mental zone beyond which a troubled world recedes into irrelevance. Zidane reveals that it is only when the game is going badly that he hears the insults of the crowd. Otherwise, for both player and spectator, when Zidane plays, there is nothing outside the stadium.

But there is, of course. And the film reminds us of this in a quietly brutal way. At half-time is interposed a montage of the news of that day: in Germany, hundreds of cane toads inexplicably swell to triple their size before exploding; in Serbia and Montenegro, thousands of homes are destroyed by the worst floods in a century. And a car bomb explodes in Najaf, Iraq, killing nine. The accompanying images convey the murderous devastation. On the left of screen is a man with his back to camera fleeing the scene. He is wearing a Real Madrid shirt bearing "Zidane" on the back.