According to FIFA, association football’s international governing body, there are probably one billion people who play the beautiful game worldwide. Yet despite its global appeal, the world’s most popular sport has a history of failure in one area where others have triumphed.
There are a number of great films which use baseball, basketball, boxing, American football, running or golf as their backdrop. There is not a single truly great film set in the world of football. The Damned United is a worthy yet ultimately unsuccessful attempt to overcome that historic curse.
The movie is an adaptation of an excellent novel by David Peace which mixes fact and fiction to tell two episodes in the life of one of English football’s most legendary figures, Brian Clough (played here by Michael Sheen). One deals with Clough’s first great success as a talented and cocky young football manager who took Derby County Football Club from Second Division oblivion to top-flight success and then threw it all away.
The other follows Clough’s disastrous 44-day tenure at Leeds United, a club which he joined in 1974 despite his hatred for the brutal and amoral antics implanted there by his predecessor and arch-rival, the superstitious and dour Don Revie (Colm Meaney). The two tales are underpinned by a subplot which analyses Clough’s relationship with his right hand man, Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall). The result is a broad and compelling canvas which touches on themes such as ambition, obsession, revenge, self-doubt and self-belief, friendship, rivalry and hatred.
Given the nature of the source material it is hardly surprising that it attracted the attention of screenwriter and executive producer Peter Morgan, who in recent years has made a name for himself with a number of high profile re-imaginings of the recent past such as The Last King of Scotland, The Queen and Frost/Nixon. However, the particular creative challenges posed by Peace’s book must have been some of the toughest Morgan has ever faced. The novel cuts back and forth between Clough’s Derby days and his Leeds fiasco in every chapter, hammering away at its chosen themes by juxtaposing different moments in time. This is a narrative technique which cinema finds much harder to pull off, but Morgan is a talented writer and most of the changes he has introduced help the story work better as a movie.
That is not to say that the script is without flaws. It is often cluttered up by clumsy back-story dialogue. It sometimes gets caught in no man’s land between comedy and drama. And although its climax is very well executed, the film’s epilogue feels somewhat unearned. Nonetheless, there is clearly an impressive grasp of what visual storytelling is all about on display here. One memorable example is a scene in which Clough’s Derby County beat Revie’s Leeds United for the first time since they have made it into the First Division. Morgan has the self-confident Clough hidden away beneath the stands of Derby’s Baseball Ground, unable to watch the match due to his fear of defeat. Thus the character’s inner doubts, a recurrent subject in the novel’s first-person narrative, are efficiently translated into the action-based language of cinema.
Michael Sheen’s acting in that particular scene is also impressive. With his proven track record as an imitator of well-known public figures such as Tony Blair and David Frost, Sheen’s rendition of Cloughie will in all likelihood make him a candidate for individual accolades. Unfortunately, his turn here seems uneven to me. It contains several quiet moments of brilliance and he nails the character’s accent and mannerisms. However, at times he appears to be trying a little too hard with the cockiness. There is a certain shimmying of the shoulders which makes it all look like a façade. This might be a deliberate artistic choice, another means of underlining the defensive aspect of Clough’s veneer of self-content, but it doesn’t fit well with the story or the memory many viewers will have of the man. Clough wasn’t someone who pretended to believe in himself. Despite his moments of self-doubt he genuinely thought he was the best manager in the world. And as the film itself concludes, history proved him right.
Ultimately, The Damned United suffers from the same malaise as all other football movies which have preceded it.
There is just no way of getting around this: football looks crap when played by actors and staged for the screen. Director Tom Hooper cleverly opts to show as little fictional playing of the game as possible and uses archive footage to very good effect.
Still, as soon as a scene requires some make-believe footy action that queasy feeling of unease returns and suspension of disbelief collapses. For whatever reason, other sports just seem to work much better on the big screen.
The Damned United is a decent and entertaining movie that never fully delivers on the dramatic potential of Clough’s legend. It will probably find a wide audience in the UK because it isn’t exclusively aimed at football fans, but it’s hard to imagine that it will make much of an impact elsewhere.
2 Comments
“Clough wasnt someone who pretended to believe in himself…”
Excellent review Alex- although I dont agree with everything. Clough famously christened himself “Old Big Head” as a self-conscious allusion to his egotism, and he was the king of the arrogant sound-byte. Along with Jose Mourinho, he believed in self-promotion, infamously claiming not to be the best manager in the business, but to be in the top one. His cockiness was undoubtedly forced, which is something I think Sheen has nailed from what Ive seen- Clough was all about projecting a persona, always being the most important person in the room, regardless of whether he was feeling overcast by the shadow of Don Revie. His confidence was only to a point, and he wouldnt have even got his first managerial position if it wadnt for Peter Taylor’s agreement to join him at Hartlepool. As much as he projected an image of swarthy grandeur, he needed Taylor, and was wrecked when Taylor died, having never made amends with his closest friend and ally.
Whether Clough was or was not wracked with self-doubt on occasion in reality is not really important though- David Peace’s book was never meant as a biography, and the man himself has always said it was intended as a portrait and never a photograph of the great man. And I think it is important to remember that Peace’s creation is a fictional character- it is a novel after all- who is based upon Brian Clough, admittedly closely in some aspects.
I personally cant wait to see the film- not because it is a biopic, or even that is a football film- I want to see it because of what it says about human struggle, and because the book was an exceptional piece of literature.
Thanks for the feedback Simon.
As you point out, this isn’t really a biopic at all. It’s about the rivalry between two great leaders, with a crucial subplot based on the hero’s relationship with his right hand man.
Regarding Clough’s self-doubt: as you say, whether it was as strong as Peace suggests in his book is really neither here nor there. This is a piece of “faction”, not a psychological biography. Still, my own impression of Clough is that despite his possible moments of self-doubt he did have a strong belief in himself. If you look at the archival footage and newsreels you see a man who comes across as effortlessly arrogant. Sheen, on the other hand, plays him as if all this big-headedness is little more than a show.
Perhaps this reflects on the difficulties of blending fiction and recent history: where does the fiction start and fact finish in terms of audience response? Most people going to see this film are going to have some kind of opinion about Clough already formed, and that is bound to inform their response to the film.
Finally, the relationship with Peter Taylor is one of the aspects that Morgan has altered most. In the book Taylor is portrayed as a bit of a money-grabbing whiner. He stands by Clough’s decision to present a tactical resignation to Derby’s board of directors. He is the man who kisses the players better after Clough has giving them a drubbing. None of this is really present in Timothy Spall’s portrait.
In the film Taylor is essentially Clough’s anchor to the real world, the man who keeps Clough’s feet on the ground. I personally felt that this made the ending seem a little forced, because the suggestion is that Clough would have achieved nothing without Taylor keeping him humble. From my POV Clough’s greatness resides in the fact that he achieved feats which realistic thinking would have dismissed as utterly impossible. No, Clough was not a great manager because he kept his feet on the ground but for exactly the opposite: he kept his head in the clouds and thus achieved the unthinkable.
By the way, I was going to say that Clough was the original “Special One” and make the comparison with Mourinho, but I chose to keep the focus on the film rather than football for the benefit of a wider readership. Still, now that you mention it I will say that the similarities between the two men are striking, especially that sense of having to prove themselves through management, their use of mind games and their mastery at handling the press. The difference is that Clough was utterly hands off in terms of tactics and Mourinho is a tactical genius.