A damned good book and film
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
Before there was “The Special One”, there was Brian Howard Clough, who was considered by many to be of the greatest managers of the English game and the greatest English manager never to manage the national side.
Despite his success with both Derby County and Nottingham Forest, its Clough’s spectacularly disastrous forty-four spell day at Leeds United in 1974 that provided author David Peace with much fodder for his fictionalised account of the events in The Damned United.
The book which was originally published in 2006, was released this year as a feature film with Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon, The Twilight Saga: New Moon) in the lead role. Now that I have read the book and seen the film I thought it would be an appropriate time to review them both.
As I alluded to before, The Damned United tracks Clough’s unsuccessful stint as manager at Leeds United and in particular his obsession with his predecessor at the Yorkshire club, Don Revie. This obsession can be traced back to Clough’s time at Derby County, with events from this time being interspersed with those happening at Leeds United, providing much background to why Clough is the man that he is. It also focuses on Clough’s close relationship with his Peter Taylor, who was his assistant at Hartlepools, Derby and Nottingham Forest with whom he had a falling out over his choice to manage Leeds.
I must admit that I watched the film first, but to be honest it doesn’t really matter what order that you watch or read them in as they are slightly different beasts. Although whilst reading the book, I had the image of Michael Sheen, as Brian Clough in my mind instead of the man himself.
And I must note that the performance of Michael Sheen is absolutely brilliant and should be worthy of an Oscar nomination, or at the very least a BAFTA. He captures the very essence of Brian Clough - the arrogance, the charisma and the biting wit. Another who’s performance is worthy of note, is that of Colm Meaney (Star Trek fans/geeks will recognise that name) as Don Revie, in fact he is the spitting image of him. When I saw the real Don Revie in the clip below I couldn’t believe my eyes.
As with all film adaptations of books there is always and discrepancies and differences between them, the most glaring of which is the film’s failure to acknowledge Clough’s well documented drinking problem, of which there is constant reference in the book. However, both are brilliant works of fiction (with some basis in fact) because at its heart lies a great story and a charismatic lead character. Both the film and the book will appeal to football fans the most, even my contemporaries who may only have a vague idea or memory of who Brian Clough is – although I’m not sure if the many Leeds fans out there will want to see it.
Not everyone was as pleased with the work as myself, with Johnny Giles successfully suing David Peace and the Clough family also expressing their displeasure at the portrayal.
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