I‘m tempted to say it was dark, but it wasn’t; it was just darker than I expected. The book was dark. The book was a kind of mildewy cave of rhetoric that, like Brian Clough himself, could have happily contained your wine collection. The movie was…well, it was a celebration of friendship. Only it was a celebration premised on the fact that one of the friends was an asshole. The other friend, who seemed to exist largely as a giant, floating source of love for the first friend, was cuddly and morally infallible. Like I said. Not dark.
However. Going in, the only thing I knew about it was that the trailer was so not dark it was actually in danger of sparkling, as a result of which I’d spent several months expecting a movie that leaned into a few warm laughs and lovingly fondled my heartstrings. Unlike every other Brian Clough fan in existence, seemingly—I’m going by the bizarre pseudo-controversy that guttered around the book and the movie in England, the thrust of which was that Clough should never be depicted at all except as a perkily simplistic, quippy saint—I wanted a complicated portrait. So the fact that, while the movie did eventually grope around for my heartstrings, it did so while insisting even at the end that its protagonist was still an asshole, and that the neurosis and megalomania that led to his (minor, fleeting) failure at Leeds were also the keys to his (massive, sustained) success everywhere else—well, it seemed like a net win over my trailer-dampened expectations. Honestly, what bothered me most was the cartoon-chipmunk portrayal of Peter Taylor.
The other concern I had going in was that based on their past projects (The Queen, John Adams), the filmmakers seemed likely to aim for a particular kind of streamlined presentation that always makes me feel like the director is stroking my hand and purring, “let me tell you what my movie means”—metaphors that line up too crisply (the stag in The Queen), scenes that underline a single point, and so on. My (inaccurate, but whatever) shorthand for this approach is that it belongs to movies that want to be plays, that want to line up their meanings with an excruciating neatness, while life and good novels never lose an element of the unaligned and the ambiguous. And yes, The Damned United was pretty thematically prim. Actually, the movie felt streamlined to the point that after the first couple of scenes, it didn’t really have anything new to tell us. It informed us at the outset that when he was tempered by Peter Taylor, Brian Clough could use his ego to inspire his players and achieve great things, but when he wasn’t, he couldn’t. And then it went on never challenging that single driving idea in every subsequent scene, until it was tearfully reaffirmed at the end. (Come to think of it, would anyone have disputed it before the movie started?) Well, at least it didn’t sail the H.M.S. Victory across the screen trailing a giant flag that read, “I REPRESENT ENGLAND.”
In the end, I guess, it was a pretty good character study for a football movie. It was also, for a character study, a pretty good football movie. Too nostalgic, I think, but that’s a general problem with depictions of the ’70s in football. (Football writers were kids then, etc.) And it managed to make the game seem exciting and tense without a single Friday Night Lights-style Transcendent Victory Moment, which is actually kind of an astonishing feat for a modern sports movie. My favorite football scene didn’t show any game action at all, but just trained the camera on Brian Clough as he sweated out a Derby-Leeds match from a room inside the stadium, listening for the roar of the crowd to tell him what was happening. The stress of not knowing was more intense than any slow-motion the-cleats-go-into-the-dirt-the-dirt-goes-flying-up re-enactment they could have given us.
So, lukewarmly, yes. But I recommend it.
Read More: Damned United
by Brian Phillips · September 24, 2009
Brian–
How did you watch it? Despite my best internet-y attempts, I can’t find a region 1 DVD.
You’re in luck—it’s being released in the U.S. tomorrow.
EDIT: Here’s the U.S. trailer, which heroically tries to distill the Revie-Clough feud into a 15-second sound bite. (“In 1973, England’s most beloved soccer coach was Don Revie. But one man would change everything. Now, the story of a legend.”)
EDIT II: This trailer is actually terrible. It plays up the (fake) inspirational kookiness angle to the point that there’s actually an intertitle that reads “He changed the rules.”
If I were trying to market this movie in America, I’d put Colm Meaney front and center and play up the fact that Transporter Chief O’Brien plays Don Revie. They’re sitting on a Star Trek gold mine and they don’t even realize it!
Are we sure it’s being released tomorrow? I can only see a limited release on Oct. 9. I hope it really is “in a city near me.” I can’t fathom how they made this book into a movie.
I enjoyed the film (as I’m a succer for any football-related cinema), but don’t think the film did much to articulate why Clough was a brilliant manager. The takeaway for me was that Clough rode on Taylor’s talent evaluation skills more than Clough’s motivational techniques were revelatory. That and that Leeds are a dirty, dirty lot.
That said, it was indeed wonderful to watch a sports film that didn’t end with a slow-motion victory moment as the players, drenched in a downpour and ebulent in victory, realize that only by becoming more than themselves could they truly become champions, both in sport and in life. Cue the symphony.
So, not clear to me: Is it as comically/insultingly un-subtle as Queen or not?
Anthony — Looks like it’s been changed to October 9, at least according to what’s now on IMDB and Fandango. Wikipedia and a bunch of early reviews/press releases all say September 25, but the October 9 sources seem more authoritative at this point. Sorry for printing the old information.
Simon — You’re right: there’s one big “Clough’s motivational skills” scene (the one where he sits down next to each of the scared Derby players before a game against Leeds and quietly reassures them), stacked against multiple moments when Taylor saves the day by finding the right player. The other skill they attribute to Clough is the nerve to stand up to incompetent chairmen (“He changed the rules,” etc.), but since that skill wrecks the Derby job and hastens his demise at Leeds, it doesn’t really contribute to a sense that he was a great manager.
Piotr — Not as unsubtle as The Queen. Not as subtle as Wild Strawberries, or, say, the first season of 30 Rock.
Thanks for the clarification. Movie dates confuse me at times as there will be NY and LA release dates and different dates for lesser, dumber folks like me who live outside those Meccas of culture. Didn’t know if that was happening once more.
I look forward to seeing the film and love suspense scenes based on limited information – I recall having to watch US-Spain on delay, and spending the entire day disconnecting from the internet, newspapers, and co-workers.
Ok, that’s helpful. Thanks.
And, yes, Wild Strawberries — what a great movie.
As a yank here I loved it. Very snappy and quick and the story just kept rolling.
why was he enduring the leeds – darby match from the bowels of the stadium? I’m a yank so was there a historical sending off or something?
Jeff, the movie doesn’t explain it. I assumed it was either a sending-off or a touchline ban (though I’ve never heard of Clough missing a Leeds match at that stage of his career with either), but some people, including Pat Murphy from BBC Sport, thought the scene was portraying Clough as too anxious to watch the game—something that almost certainly never happened. That interpretation has fueled criticism of the movie for exaggerating Clough’s flaws, but it’s not clear to me that that’s what the filmmakers intended. If anyone else has any insight, it would be appreciated.