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The Damned United
Director: Tom Hooper
Writer: Peter Morgan based on the book
by David Peace
Cast: Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Colm
Meaney, Jim
Broadbent, Joseph Dempsie, Maurice Roëves, Henry Goodman, Stephen Graham, Brian
McCardie, Peter McDonald Running time: 1 hour 37 mins
In August 2006, David Peace published his controversial
book, The Damned United, about a tempestuous period in Brian Clough's
professional life during the 1974 season. It is concerned primarily with
Clough's doomed forty-four day period as manager of a team he hated, Leeds
United. Unusually for a work of fiction (or so it is strangely and it must be
said inaccurately labelled) it carries a bibliography at the back to show Peace
has drawn on available material in the form of other books about or including
Clough. In other words it draws attention to his own book's non-fiction,
documentary aspect.
I was utterly swept away by the book. Technically it
alternates between Clough at Leeds, day by day, and Clough at Derby County,
building a brilliant, highly successful European side from nothing. Clough is generally
shown to be a proud, vain, obsessive, deeply vulnerable, insecure, childish man
who gets drunk whenever he is down, which is frequently, and who shamelessly
exploits those around him. In Peace’s depiction there is an ongoing aura of
doom with claustrophobic, nefarious, and poisonous board-rooms and dressing
rooms, showing the delicate balance between admiration, envy, total loathing
and absolute contempt in Clough's attitude to the previous and hugely successful
manager of Leeds, Don Revie. There is a constant thread of regret and malaise,
and it also reveals a certain kind of partnership-friendship-mutual dependency
between Clough and his sidekick, Peter Taylor.
And so to the film inspired by the book – “The Damned
United”. The beautiful game is full of larger than life characters; men of
boundless desire, on and off the pitch, who inspire lifelong devotion from the
fans. Key to any team's success is the manager - the architect of every
hard-fought battle between the goal posts, who must weather the storm when
players fail to perform. In the annals of British and indeed world football,
Brian Clough remains the most charismatic, bullish and successful figure of
all, and is still the only domestic manager to win back-to-back European cups.
Friends and family of Clough reacted angrily to the
depiction of Old Big 'Ead as bullying and selfish in Peace’s controversial book
and at the time of writing this review those same loved ones have predictably
refused to watch Tom Hooper's film, adapted for the screen by Peter Morgan.
They really needn’t have worried. Steeped in nostalgia and blessed with an
endearing and blistering performance from Michael Sheen as the 'greatest
England manager they never had', this homage to the former darling of Derby and
Nottingham Forest shoots and scores on many levels.
The film opens in July 1974 with Brian and his two boys,
Simon and Nigel, travelling to West Yorkshire to succeed Don Revie (Colm
Meaney) as manager of the then Division One champions, Leeds United. An impromptu interview with Granada TV is broadcast in
which Brian openly
criticises Revie's tactics, declares war against senior squad members including
Billy Bremner (Stephen Graham), Johnny Giles (Peter McDonald) and Norman Hunter
(Mark Cameron). "I don't have to justify myself to you," Brian
tells Johnny sternly after a disastrous start to the campaign. "No, but
come Saturday, there will be 40,000 people here who you do have to justify
yourself to," is the cocky retort from the player. One of a terrific
series of flashbacks to six years earlier reveal the seeds of Brian's dislike
of Revie as he and loyal assistant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall), take Derby
from the foot of Division Two to the dizzy heights of Division One.
The film also brilliantly captures the atmosphere of decay
that hung over football in those days; its mud-bath pitches and dilapidated
stadia, and scruffy players who survived on raw talent and very little
training, some still smoking in the dressing room before and after games. The
Damned United is an enthralling and largely affectionate tribute to a man who
wears egotistical bravado like a comfortable, old jumper. "I certainly
wouldn't say I'm the best manager in the business, but I'm in the top
one," he tells an interviewer boldly, concealing the fears we glimpse when
he is alone, powerfully conveyed by Hooper during a rematch between the two
clubs. The Derby manager cannot bear to watch from the stands and emerges from
the office below, convinced his team has lost. A wry smile spreading across
Taylor's face says otherwise.
Despite a rather lacklustre sense of any real focus on the
immensity of frustration Peace’s book candidly exploits in Clough’s day-to-day
experience in the Leeds job, and it does after all use the explicit term
depicting his attitude to the club in the title shared by both the book and the
film (although perhaps Clough’s acceptance of the position was merely to
humiliate the side risking a similar outcome towards his own so-far highly
impressive CV), Morgan's script elegantly navigates the timeframes, providing
us with background to the rivalry that drives Brian to the brink of
self-destruction. Sheen's rapport with Spall galvanises the picture, with an
amusing emotional pay-off in the closing minutes when Clough has to grovel for
Peter's forgiveness after a spat. The closing sequence featuring actual footage
of the real Clough in his finest hour/s and a blinding on-screen destruction of
Don Revie is immensely satisfying.
Religulous
Directed by Larry Charles Cast: Bill Maher
Running time: 101 minutes
The son of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, US comedian Bill Maher
‘religiously’ attended church with his dad and sister until he became a
teenager. He treated the weekly Sunday ritual with a mixture of boredom and
fear, and didn’t really question why his mother didn’t go with them until he
was older. By then his advancing maturity developed and the concepts of
religion and faith perplexed him. (He quips "being half-Catholic/half-Jewish,
when I went to Confession, I'd take a lawyer in with me!") Now in his fifties, Maher sets out to deal with this topic
in "Religulous," an at-times
hilarious yet sincere documentary that makes the case for why all of the
world's organised religions are not only utterly ridiculous but also
detrimental and dangerous.
"Religulous" opens with Bill standing on Megiddo,
a hill in Israel that, according to the New Testament, is the site where
Armageddon will occur – which simply looks like a pile of dirt after a small
building demolition. He then takes off on a worldwide tour, visiting and
interviewing religious leaders, scientists and everyday punters. Most of his
subjects though, come across as people with unfailing faith and belief even while they stumble and mumble as they’re
left speechless at the fair, level-headed
questions Maher asks. Their inane reasoning for why things are so, combined
with their total inability to agree with each other on anything, rips apart the
exhaustive range of religions (Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Islam, and
Scientology among others, are covered here).
How can one religion be right and the others so totally
wrong? How can the Bible be taken for its word when it was written and revised
by the common man hundreds of years separate from the events discussed, and is
fraught with fantastic stories that discount the scientific proof of evolution?
Why does one antique shopkeeper Maher talks to defiantly shoot down the belief
in Santa Claus, a red-suited man who flies around the world in one night
bringing presents to children, but is perfectly acceptant of and plausible with the
prospect of a virgin birth and a being that supposedly listens simultaneously to millions of people begging for help the world
over? God: “oh
yeah, isn't that the guy who apparently listens to people pleading for things to be done, then does
absolutely nothing for them, yet these same people continue to believe in him?” (Not from the film incidentally,
my own 'quote'!)
In one respect, Maher is ready to be critical to his
interviewees, but he also actively searches to be enlightened and receive
answers about things he hadn't thought about before. For the most part, he is
respectful of them. As with Michael Moore, director Larry Charles
(2006's
"Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of
Kazakhstan") no doubt edited "Religulous" in such a way as to
get optimum comedic mileage out of the subjects' sometimes priceless reactions
and ill-considered utterances. Maher has a point to make above all else though,
that religion is mishandled, woefully misinterpreted, and a way for people to
grab hold of something to make them feel better about themselves and their
impending deaths, and he does a thoughtful job of it that informs the viewer
while getting them to open their minds to other possibilities.
Bill Maher is a lively,
self-deprecating host who keeps
"Religulous" snappy, zestful
and jestful. The ludicrous responses he elicits from recent politicians'
and authority figures' claims that the USA is a Christian country is cemented by
quotations from founding fathers Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson that state in no uncertain terms how foolish and unnecessary they
believed religion to be, particularly in relation to the way the country is
governed. His discussion with a minister who reformed his homosexuality,
married a lesbian and bred three children - "I guess the jury's
still out
on them," Maher says, not quite kidding - is good for giggles. This
minister is obviously in denial and filled with Catholic guilt; it’s hard not
to see right through his unconvincing façade.
In one absurdly funny sequence, Maher visits The Holy Land Experience,
a theme park/museum in Orlando, Florida, complete with tour guides, exhibits
where humans and dinosaurs co-exist, and recreations of the crucifixion of
Christ performed to the clicks and flashbulbs of tourists' cameras. What a
lovely memory to capture on film. So subtle that it is all the more hilarious,
Maher's interviews on the grounds of The Holy Land Experience are briefly
interrupted by sounds in the distance of women screaming in horror and, most
bizarrely, a witch cackling. It's stranger-than-fiction comic gold that could
only be captured by a documentary crew.
"Religulous" is not deeply
penetrating - Bill
Maher has gone into the project with a singular, one-sided purpose, and is only
able to skim the surface - but it is absorbing, amusing and educational. When
the film turns serious at the end, Maher speaking the truths as he sees them
while images of religion-based death and destruction flash across the screen in
a disturbing montage, the film stirs, shakes and makes the viewer think that maybe
he's on to something. Ultimately, though, the religious debate will rage on for
all times. "What if you're wrong?" a devout believer asks
Maher in
one scene. "What if you're wrong?"
Maher shoots back at him.
Both are suddenly at a loss for words. What if, indeed. Doubt, Maher says, is
his product, and you have to hand it to him for staying on the message.
The Boat That Rocked
Written and Directed by: Richard Curtis
Cast: Rhys Ifans, Philip Seymour Hoffman,
Nick Frost, Bill
Nighy, January Jones, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Davenport, Tom Sturridge, Rhys
Darby, Chris O'Dowd, Emma Thompson
Back in the halcyon era of 1966 the BBC’s pre-Radio 1
equivalent ‘The Light Programme’ played just 2 hours of pop music every week.
The only alternative to this downright liberty was the poor reception available
via your tranny from Radio Luxemburg at night. Eventually bohemian
entrepreneurs decided to retaliate against this – and pirate radio was born,
blasting out non-stop rock and pop from the high seas for 24 hours a day - and
25 million people - over half the UK population avidly devoured the output from
the pirates every single day. In
1967 though, Harold Wilson’s Labour government appointed Tony Benn (yes, for
indeed it was he, believe it or not) to bring down the Pirates and destroy the
democracy of free access music radio.
Richard Curtis’ highly affectionate homage to those times
“The Boat That Rocked” puts a much more fascist slant on the behaviour of the
Government Minister Dormandy - the specky evil incarnate juicily caricatured by
Kenneth Branagh who is out for the blood of these scandalous whippersnappers.
In an era when the stuffy corridors of power stifle anything approaching
youthful exuberance, Dormandy seizes the opportunity to earn personal political brownie points and The Marine Broadcasting
Offences Act is passed in an effort to outlaw
the pirates once and for all, and remove from above Davy Jones’ Locker their
dreadfully depraving influence on our young.
Radio Rock employs a motley crew featuring terrific turns
from some top names in a hugely enjoyable yarn – including an effervescent Bill
Nighy as the captain/owner of the varicating vessel, Philip Seymour Hoffman as
the world-weary hirsute Yankjock, Rhys Ifans in a delicious role he must have
savoured, as the promiscuous chick magnet and Nick Frost not letting his girth
adversely affect his girl-grabbing exploits. As the hour of doom approaches and
the floating station moves inexorably towards extinction - what results is
literally a storm on the high seas as R.R.’s devoted fans rally together and
stage an epic Dunkirk-style hundred boat rescue to save their DJ heroes.
Obviously a labour of love for Curtis, his attention to
technical detail with strong input from the experienced ex-Pirate Johnnie Walker
is mostly spot on, although muso-pedants like myself may well feel a slight peeve
coming on at the use of tracks from some time after the portrayed event (circa 1966-67), such as Cat Stevens’ “Father
and Son”, The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled
Again”, and the album sleeves floating around in the flood such as Elvis
Costello’s “Almost Blue” and Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells”. Tut tut, Dicky! Great fun
nevertheless.
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