The Damned United

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classic

Screenwriter Peter Morgan has made a career out of dramatizing important events in British history. His first screenplay, The Queen, fictionalized the impact of Princess Diana’s death on the royal family. In The Last King of Scotland, Morgan dramatized key facets of Idi Amin’s rule. Morgan’s also the screenwriter behind Frost/Nixon, which reenacted the 1977 interviews between Richard Nixon and British journalist David Frost. Now, he and director Tom Hooper are giving their dramatized version of events in The Damned United, a story about one of Britain’s most outspoken football managers, Brian Clough.

Adapted by Peter Morgan from the book, The Damned Utd., by David Peace, The Damned United (film) is a football movie that’s not really about football. It’s about the characters of football. For those of you not familiar with Clough, he started his coaching career at Hartlepools United, where he first met asst. manager Peter Taylor back in 1965 after a knee injury ended Clough’s playing days. From there, Clough went on to manage Derby County (with Taylor), then Leeds United (without Taylor) before reuniting with Taylor at Nottingham Forest. At Nottingham, Clough became the only football coach in British history to lead his team to two consecutive European Cups.

The book and the film both focus on Clough’s infamous 44 day stint as the ill-fated manager of Leeds United. Yet, even though the focal point of the story is Clough’s tenure at Leeds, the narrative jumps back and forth between Leeds (1974) and the time he spent managing Derby County (1967-72). During the reign of Brian Clough, played by Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon, The Queen), key events and games are highlighted, management is crossed, relationships are formed, and rivalries rank supreme. The rest of the cast includes Timothy Spall as Peter Taylor, Clough’s assistant manager, Colm Meaney as Don Revie, Clough’s rival manager, and Jim Broadbent as Sam Longston, the chairman of Leeds United.

Before the movie even got under way, Peace’s critically acclaimed book was already creating quite a stir among Clough’s friends and family. Why? They believe that the novel, fictitiously written from Clough’s point of view, paints an unflattering, inaccurate image of Clough as a haunted, paranoid, chain-smoking, obsessive man who is so consumed with anger that his long-winded monologues are consistently littered with cuss words.

To be fair, Peace will be the first to admit that his novel is a work of fiction that happens to be based on fact. The reason why the family has such a problem with Peace’s fictitious portrayal of Clough is because they’re concerned that glaringly inaccurate novels like The Damned Utd. present a certain danger in mixing fact and fiction because many readers won’t be able to discern the difference between the two. Unfortunately, the uproar didn’t stop with Clough’s family. Former Leeds player, Johnny Giles, won the libel suit that he filed against Peace and the book’s publisher (Faber & Faber) for claiming Giles was a “key player” in the firing of Clough from Leeds United (http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Leeds-United-legend-wins-apology.3747294.jp).

After watching the courts force Faber & Faber to remove select passages from the book and award Giles a “substantial payment” for damages incurred, the film’s producers knew that changes needed to be made. Rather than adhering to the book’s narrative format of Clough telling the story through his dark, moody, neurotic 1st person point of view, the film presents Clough’s tale from a lighter and more humorous 3rd person perspective. Is it effective? Yes and no. Yes, because it appeases Clough’s family and the studio’s attorneys. No, because the cleaned-up version of Clough is now a tragic hero without an Achilles heel. Where’s the tragedy? Where’s the hamartia that led to Clough’s downfall? Personally, I’m starting to think that Hooper hid it in all those oddly placed subtle high and low angle shots that made the story seem a little off kilter.

Another other big change is the film’s creation of a “love triangle” between Clough, Taylor, and Revie. Is that Hollywood’s new rule? If there’s no traditional romance in the story, add a “bromance?” The problem is that the bromance established between Clough and Taylor in The Damned United is more of a two-way codependent relationship than a love triangle. Clough may love Taylor and hate Revie, but there’s nothing connecting Taylor to Revie at all. Ironically, what Hooper and Morgan did faithfully transfer from the book to the film was all of the sports errors. BBC sports journalist Pat Murphy stated that he noticed “17 factual inaccuracies in the film after watching it twice” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Damned_United).

Overall, The Damned United is an entertaining and enjoyable story about Brian Clough’s tumultuous 44 day tenure at Leeds. Yet, as engaging as these dramatized, iconic characters are, will audiences outside the world of football be able to tell fact from fiction? Does it really matter? Apparently, not to the studios. They’re just happy this version isn’t as likely to create as many lawsuits.

© Left From Hollywood 10/23/2009