The Damned United

I should probably start by saying this review is written by someone who doesn't follow nor cares about Football and knew nothing about Brian Clough prior to watching The Damned United so all the information is taken from the film and not the book on which it is based.

Employing a split narrative showing Brian Clough's tenure at Derby County and terrible 44 day stint as manager of Leeds United, the film flicks between 1968/9 and 1975 to show how Clough and his assistant Peter Taylor guided Derby County from the bottom of the Second Division to League Champions in only two seasons.  Clough, driven by his own ego and professional hatred of the then Leeds manager Don Revie, went to Leeds with disastrous results.  After winning the League with Derby, Clough was offered the top job at Leeds, then the biggest club in the country and accepted, despite publicly offending most of the Leeds players and the manner in which they played.
 
The story begins with Clough, his family and Peter Taylor watching the FA Cup draw where Derby are given a home tie against Leeds, a huge money spinning fixture causing the chairman Sam Longson to celebrate and tell Clough to take his family out for a meal on him.  As the coach pulls up and the Leeds players and coaching staff walk towards The Baseball Ground, Brian Clough can't wait to meet Don Revie, the best manager in England.  When they get there Revie doesn't even acknowledge Clough and Leeds procede to cheat and foul their way to a victory.  From then Clough can't wait to get to the First Division where he can beat Revie.  Rapidly securing promotion, their rivalry heats up to the extent that Clough puts out a first team against Leeds only a few days before a European Cup semi-final, much to the chagrin of his chairman.
 

When his resignation letter - meant to be rejected and strengthen his own position - is accepted, Clough is out of a job and despite agreeing to move with Taylor to Brighton and build up their team, his ego gets the better of him and he accepts the manager's job at Leeds to do better than Don Revie could.  What follows is an apparently famous six week period where the players don't take kindly to Clough's approach and, still loyal to Revie (now England manager), take no notice of Clough's desire to play beautiful football.  After only 6 games in charge he was fired.
 
 Working from David Peace's novel of the same name, Peter Morgan wrote the screenplay and both he and director Tom Hooper knew that Michael Sheen would be perfect for the lead, Morgan having worked with him on The Queen and Frost/Nixon.  Jim Broadbent contacted Peter Morgan (who had directed him on Longford) and demanded to play Sam Longson - a request Morgan simply couldn't turn down.  With Timothy Spall as Peter Taylor and Colm Meany as Don Revie they built up quite a cast.  Just as he did with Tony Blair, David Frost and Kenneth Williams, Michael Sheen completely inhabits Brian Clough.  I wasn't familiar with the man's voice or mannerisms but a short clip of him after the film was astonishing as I couldn't tell the difference between Clough and Sheen although they don't look alike.  Sheen works hard at his art, desperate to make it more than impersonation, reading about his 'subject' and studying video and audio tapes of them and, just as it has done in the past, his hard work pays off and he is terrific.
 

Thankfully The Damned United isn't a film about football - there is lots of football related material for those who lived through the era - but it is more a film about the 'marriage' between Clough and Taylor and the obsession with Revie that nearly tore it apart.  I was a little unsure whether I'd even find this remotely interesting, let alone enjoy it but was engrossed at the cinema and loved it again watching it the second time round at home.  It shows that there are elements to sports stories that transcend the game and become human interest dramas that are utterly fascinating.

The Disc

 
Extra Features
The commentary with Tom Hooper, Michael Sheen and Producer Andy Harries is interesting and revealing though a little hard to follow as they all sound pretty similar so you occasionally have to guess at the speaker's identity by what they are saying.  They cover everything mentioned in the other supplementary material and more.


There are four featurettes with a combined running total of over 45 minutes looking at the making of in general, how Michael Sheen does 'his thing', a tribute to Clough which isn't as mawkish as I feared and is genuinely interesting and a piece on how the game changed in the seventies that even I appreciated.  In addition, there are a selection of deleted scenes with optional commentary by Tom Hooper, plus a few trailers. 
 
All in all, a decent selection with plenty of information to entertain but not too much to bore.
 
The Picture
This isn't a film that requires high definition but it looks stunning, especially the horribly wet and muddy playing fields and the gorgeous colours in Majorca.  The work that went into recreating the era pays off with excellent costumes and set decorations and things like cars and other props make it look of its time - there's nothing that shows that it was shot about 40 years after the events depicted.  Hooper makes good use of stock footage, accompanying graphics showing the league tables with real highlights and a ticker with the scores.
 

Helping capture the time is the behaviour and traditions that seem completely alien nowadays; when preparing for the arrival of Leeds, Brian Clough prepares the away team dressing room by laying an orange carefully on top of each towel (with none matching) and then places an ashtray beside each pile.
 
The Sound
The Damned United is very well scored and they make good use of source music from the likes of Deep Purple and Fleetwood Mac to help capture the time.  The dialogue is very nicely presented and scenes set around a game make good use of the surround speakers for crowd noise and off the ball incidents.
 

Final Thoughts
A fascinating character study of a man who, by most accounts, was a fascinating character, able to secure loyalty even amongst those who didn't like him and, as the film says at the finale, the greatest manager the England team never had.  If you are into football then you will get more out of it than someone who isn't but it really only uses the game as a backdrop, focusing more on one man's ambition to be the best, driven on by his own arrogance and hatred of a rival manager.  There is also a love story between Clough and Taylor, men who knew that they couldn't exist without hurting one another but needed each other to be the best they could be and, together, proved to be a formidable managerial team.
 
This is highly recommended for everyone, whether you like football or not.