In What is art? (1897), Lev Tolstoy writes that art exists thanks to our ability to be infected by the feelings of others. Our souls must merge, that is the purpose of art. If anyone could do that, it was Michael D’Angelo Archer. He died on Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 51. A day later the public broadcaster repeated Devil’s Piethe Dutch documentary by Carine Bijlsma that followed him between 2015 and 2018.
D’Angelo shaped and unleashed my life. His music made all music important. He was a watchman at a gate I never knew existed, to a world where I could disappear at any time. Sadness, happiness, calmness, romance – I find it all in D’Angelo. And with me millions of others, judging by the flood of messages in the media and on social media.
Devils Pie rawly shows that D’Angelo was an enigmatic, troubled man. Drummer Ahmir Questlove Thompson says that every “black genius” struggles with guilt: that they made it and childhood friends did not. For D’Angelo, this included guilt before God, for making devilish music, and an almost schizophrenic relationship between Michael and his alter ego D’Angelo. He owed the fact that he survived as best he could to the people around him: keyboardist Cleo Pookie Sample, tour manager Alan Leeds, his friend Lou Barber, his grandmother. In the film, Pookie puts it practically: “I’m background. When he jumps up from the piano I take over his part, so he has the freedom to do what he has to do.” People with a divine talent can only flourish thanks to the people who do nothing for them.
Deceased father
This was evident from another documentary on Wednesday: The Ordeal (NPO 3) by Joël van den Heuvel, about Utrecht’s Mohamed Ihattaren, the super talent who already played for PSV at the age of sixteen. Not much later, when he was seventeen, his father died of cancer. Then it went downhill. He appeared less and less at training sessions of his new club Sampdoria, his contract was terminated and he became discredited due to abuse and alleged links with the criminal circuit – although there is surprisingly little about this in the documentary.
About his family, and the love that lives between these people. About sadness and mourning, and about depression – although that word is not mentioned. It is clear that he has not yet come to terms with his father’s death. Tears still well up when he talks about it. Not surprising, he is only 23. That is normally much too young for a documentary, but in this case it is understandable: Ihattaren has already led three lives.
“I was in pain from a lot of things that I couldn’t admit, which made me do other things,” he says on the beach of El Hoceima, his father’s town in northern Morocco. Mo Ihattaren is wearing a blue shirt from RKC Waalwijk, the club that gave him a new chance. At his father’s grave, Van den Heuvel asks what Mo would like to say to him. He breaks into a thousand pieces: “I apologize for the mistakes I made at a young age, which I don’t think he would support. I want to make him prouder than he was then. And that I will always continue to take care of my mother.”
When the bottom had hit, he strengthened family ties and founded Team Mo, with mentors, trainers and specialists who got him back on track. His app conversation with Mark van Bommel, the coach who made him debut, is telling: in three messages he sends seven hearts, calls Van Bommel a brother and says he loves him. Van Bommel loves him too. Ihattaren has now finally found the freedom to do what he has to do at Fortuna Sittard.
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