DAMNED UNITED
This spectacularly exciting film concentrates on a famous turn of events in British sports history. Brian Howard Clough was the winningest ever football (soccer) manager in U.K. history, although he was never in charge of the British National Team. Don Revie, was maybe the second most successful manager, did run the National team and made a mess of it. The two became the bitterest of rivals and this is the story of Clough’s obsession with besting Revie: his rise and rise and...well I’m not spoiling anything when I say that life is a series of peaks and valleys for all of us.
In the film Clough (Michael Sheen) is managing the Derby County team, together with his assistant, Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall). Within a few years the team climbs up from the bottom of Division Two to the top of Division One. Along the way Clough increasingly alienates his boss, Sam Longson (Jim Broadbent) and publicly calls out the Leeds United team and their manager, Revie (Colm Meaney) for their brutally aggressive, dirty tricks manner of play. What the film focuses on is the period between Clough and Taylor’s time at Derby and Clough’s subsequent 44 day stint with Leeds United where he is decidedly not met with open arms.
The brilliance of the film comes on many fronts. First and foremost, the writer and director have manage to fashion an utterly engaging spectacle about a man and a series of events that already exist in the public imagination via an almost unending flow of television material (now readily available on Youtube). Much of the credit should go to the novel upon which the film is based, by David Peace. I imagine that for British football fans, and TV watchers in general, Brian Clough is old news, unlike the revelation he was for me. That being said, the film has been a huge hit there and that’s testimony to the filmmaker’s skill of translating and expanding upon what the novel did: scratching below the surface of what is seen in interviews to tell a new story about Brian Clough, Peter Taylor and Don Revie.
Another major achievement is to make a film that is about sports without making it a film that is nothing but footage of games. As much as I love tennis, for example, I’d probably get bored or I wouldn’t think it was a movie if the life of Martina Navratilova consisted of nothing but highlights of all of her best matches strung together. And so the directors use only brief snatches of actual football games, as they skillfully build tension and excitement by emphasizing the noise, the cheering, and the stamping of crowds of fans.
Ultimately though the film is a character piece more than a pure action film and therefore would not work without superlative acting. Michael Sheen pulls off yet another brilliant impersonation (Nixon, Tony Blair) although when you look at the real Clough it seems less an impersonation than an interpretation. He and Spall are locked in a sort of man love, sports relationship and the looks that pass between them say it all. Colm Meaney is the spitting image of Don Revie and a deliciously obnoxious nemesis for the somewhat self-destructive Clough.
I don’t really care about football but maybe I’m just slightly more interested than I was a month ago. This film is so gripping, so exciting and so absolutely much fun to watch that you cannot help but wonder about that Posh and Becks thing.
The Damned United opens September 25, 2009.
Directed by Tom Hooper; written by Peter Morgan, based on the novel by David Pearce; produced by Andy Harries, Christine Langan Hugo Heppell and Peter Morgan; Director of Photography, Ben Smithard; edited by Melanie Oliver; music by Rob Lane. Released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 98 minutes.
With: Michael Sheen(Brian Clough); Colm Meaney (Don Revie); Timothy Spall (Peter Taylor); Sam Longson (Jim Broadbent); Stephen Graham (Billy Bremner); Peter McDonald (Johnny Giles) and Elizabeth Carling (Barbara Clough).
