THE FIRM VS THE DAMNED UNITED
THE FIRM VS THE DAMNED UNITED
“It's the ’70s in Britain. Self-care is basically Dunhills and Chivas Regal.”
Emily Schultz, an American, has played soccer since the age of eight. I may be nominally British, but I can describe my entire experience with the sport as “Ducking. Lots of ducking.” With the FIFA Women’s World Cup this month, we’re uniting our cultures by bringing you a football double feature commentary about two of the best British films on the sport.
Alan Clarke’s final film, The Firm (1989) is a sustained 90-minute heart attack of class resentment and knife violence. Gary Oldman plays Bex, a football hooligan and real estate agent navigating his double life in yuppie-ascendent Britain. In Clarke’s Elephant—his most known film—he used the poetry of the Steadicam to implicate the viewer in a relentless murder tour of Belfast during the Troubles. In The Firm he uses it to sync our pulse rates with Bex as he sprints from failed rumbles and Stanley knife slashes with other aging football gangs, to a final breakdown with his wife, played by Oldman’s then real-life partner Lesley Manville. Not much of it is about the game itself, and that’s the point.
The Damned United (2009) is a graceful and gritty adaptation of the novel by David Peace that details the 44 days of Brian Clough as failed manager of Leeds United, the most feared British team of 1974. Michael Sheen has a blast with the dogged and aggravatingly confident Clough while screenwriter Peter Morgan perfects his historical style that began with The Queen and would later achieve even frothier peaks with The Crown.
Both films are about love—point of fact, The Firm opens with “That’s Amore!” over images of vandalism and window smashing. But it’s obsessive, corrosive love that hides just under fandom’s tear-streaked face.
We’re in the United States, so we’re calling it soccer for most of our discussion, excepting for quotes and specific references. Please don’t jump us in the car park after.
BRIAN J DAVIS: Emily, you’re coming into this commentary recording right from having played your best game of the year?
EMILY SCHULTZ: It should have been 2–0. But we won at 2–1. I really don’t enjoy The Firm, by the way. Technically, it’s masterful, but the violence is so…first personal.
BJD: It’s true. When we first watched this, you were watching through your hands and asking things like, “Is the baby okay?”
ES: It really is the filmmaking. It’s so intense.
BJD: I now understand sports through you. I never in my life got it before. And I enjoy watching soccer with you. I enjoy it until they pan to the fans and I see flags painted on faces and I cringe so much.
ES: You like sports but not fandom?
BJD: I love the drama of sports but something strange happens in the stands. And here’s our first look at young Jay Simpson, who you may know as Foz from Peep Show, or Rod Senseless in Black Mirror.
ES: Is that it for actual soccer in the film?
BJD: That’s it. It’s all knife crime from here on in! And that’s the point. That these gangs ruined the game in the ’70s and ’80s.
ES: I relate to the game. I do not relate to these….
BJD: Yobs? Bootboys? Shitmunchers?
ES: I’ll bring the soccer. You bring the British.
BJD: I’ll use this moment to explain the depth of my connection to the United Kingdom. When I was twenty, I had dropped out of art school — please sit with that for a moment.
ES: Quite the accomplishment.
BJD: Thank you, it gets even more shameful. And after a year of me doing nothing, my family was concerned, and my brother was living in Brixton then, so they borrowed money from my grandmother to send me to the UK so I could “find my roots.” And that wasn’t the best thing for me at the time, because apparently my roots included: getting tossed out of a party at the ICA, then throwing up behind one of the lions in Trafalgar Square and passing out. And I remember this giant of a man, maybe not even a “bobby,” it could have just been someone who wanted to murder me asking, “By any chance are you an American?” And I mumbled, “Canadian” to which he replied, “Jolly good. Carry on.”
ES: That didn’t happen!
BJD: Totally did! We have to talk about the filmmaking. This is what Alan Clarke did so well. Like Elephant, it’s immersive trauma.
ES: He’s very much, How about a cup of tea and some trauma, love?
BJD: It’s so focused though.
ES: It’s honing in on one character, Bex (Gary Oldman), at one particular point in his life.
BJD: As he makes horrible decisions. And this is really what was happening then with football gangs. They were taking on the vestments of yuppies, taking middle-class jobs.
ES: But like functional alcoholics going on a bender over the weekend?
BJD: Exactly.
ES: Sorry I have to stretch.
[Break for Emily to stretch her soccer injuries.]
BJD: This is my favorite Gary Oldman performance of all time, by the way.
ES: He’s great, but this character is so loathsome.
BJD: This is what I was left with the last time I watched this. Here you have working class gangs with their own shadow leagues—local and even international—and their own celebrity captains. It’s their way of clawing power back from the submissiveness of fandom. They’ve made themselves stars and negated the game.
ES: What we would now call toxic fandom?
BJD: One of the things England is actually good at is subcultures.
ES: You learned some things passed out in your own sick in Trafalgar Square! It was good for you.
BJD: Here’s the most chilling scene. Bex lives two blocks from his parents still. He’s in a very small world. And in his childhood room, full of football posters still, he has his weapon stash of knives, and axes and then he practices!
ES: I love this scene. It’s almost novelistic in how alone we are with him.
BJD: This is one of the most terrifying things I could think of: Gary Oldman practicing beating someone with a telescoping baton. Imagine seeing that face right before you die.
ES: Wait, where is this actor from?
BJD: Nick Dunning from The Tudors! Literally every co-star in this film went on to The Tudors, The Crown, or Game of Thrones.
ES: I have such a wife-connection with Lesley Manville. She is the only woman in this world of men and she just doesn’t want the football gang meeting to wake the baby up.
BJD: She carries a lot here as the only person with sense.
ES: The knife tattoo scene. I can’t watch. There are far too many blades in this film.
BJD: The rumble scene. This kitchen sink handheld approach is much more intense than any studio fight scene. You feel everything.
ES: I don’t like this part. [The youngest member of the gang has his face slashed.]
BJD: And the fact that the rival gang look like members of an over-the-hill New Romantic band makes it so much scarier. Like, they should be singing “Don’t You Want Me” in a Dorset pub instead of doing this.
ES: I’m so glad they don’t show the revenge face slash scene. And to be honest, they do cut away from the worst throughout.
BJD: It’s that immersive Steadicam filmmaking. But yes, from here on in this feels like a horror film, just in terms of dread.
ES: I understand anger. I don’t understand ritualized violence.
BJD: I think it goes back to this attempt at power. This is their revenge against the degradations of the class system. Bex’s life looks okay, but the reality is he’s in a terraced house and—oh shit, no, no, not the scene of the baby finding the Stanley knife! I’m looking away.
ES: Goddammit, I saw it!
BJD: They’re back from the hospital and now the great Lesley Manville scene. She just slaps the shit out of Gary Oldman while shouting, MY baby! MY baby! Like she’s firing him from parenthood itself.
ES: No one fights on screen better than actual couples. Now he’s at his parents and this scene got to me as well. You want his parents to tell him to cut this shit out but…
BJD: His father is helping him plan what will be his final fight! It’s multi-generational. And now he confronts his nemesis Phil Davis, who would later be a teacher in the magnificent and underrated Notes On a Scandal.
ES: The first time I saw this I did not see this ending coming.
BJD: Here’s the kicker. No pun intended. The film switches to mockumentary and during the interviews his gang declares Bex a martyr. I seriously thought that it was going end like those horror films where the camera crew-within the film are torn apart.
ES: Really?
BJD: I mean, it is a pub full of drunk men chanting “England!” while wearing Union Jack shorts. Nationalism is not only evil and infectious, but also utterly ridiculous.
ES: This is such a well-made, well-acted movie…I still don’t enjoy it.
BJD: Going from that, to The Damned United, which we just started, I want to say the United Kingdom, maybe, just maybe, takes football a little too seriously. Probably to the detriment of their mental health.
ES: And it opens with a title card: The nation is in trauma after having failed to qualify for the World Cup. Hope that doesn’t happen to us this week! [Ed. note: It does.]
BJD: Since this is a biopic, technically, let’s circle back to that for a second. The way to do it is to take the “make shit up” route. Like this movie.
ES: It’s so much better to be able to write that way.
BJD: You don’t get a lot of protagonists named Brian in films.
ES: Were you named after Brian’s Song?
BJD: I was absolutely named after Brian’s Song.
ES: Why aren’t we watching that?
BJD: It’s terrible. And The Damned United is key for me understanding you and sports. Brian Clough really believes in sportsmanship and the beauty of the game and teamwork, and believes that’s what wins at the end of the day. That’s you! You are just like that.
ES: I won the sportsmanship trophy in high school.
BJD: Of course you did! This movie is also Moby Dick set in British football. Man gets obsessed with white whale—taking over Leeds— and is dragged down by it.
ES: He comes off as a bit of a cock during this first act. But that changes once we flashback and see his journey from the bottom division.
BJD: This is the beginning of Brian Clough’s psychic wound. They’re a bottom ranked team and they’re playing Leeds United, the top ranked. And the Leeds manager, Don Revie, snubs him, thereby setting a years-long resentment in motion.
ES: We were the bottom ranked team tonight and beat the top ranked.
BJD: And what was the score again? Tell us!
ES: Should’ve been 2–0.
BJD: His downfall with managing Leeds was his obsession with Don Revie. Nemesis is such a classic story device. It shouldn’t be slept on! And this nemesis started out as a love object.
ES: He’s leaving fresh oranges for the visiting team and polished wine glasses for the manager. It’s date planning. For a man who won’t pay any attention to him!
BJD: Without getting too esoteric, I think obsession ends up taking us away from the thing we love.
ES: I’d completely agree with that. Wow. Look at Brian Clough’s playing. Damn, those legs!
BJD: Are you exclaiming about Michael Sheen’s legs and ball play?
ES: Going to be honest. They’re very: nice to see you!
BJD: He’s trying to change how Leeds plays and again this so you. He hates cheating and so do you. I think it actually breaks your heart.
ES: In soccer yes. I feel if you have skills, you don’t need to cheat. But in life…there is cheating involved.
BJD: Maybe that’s where you two differ. Every great character has a flaw and his is that he believes the world should think like him. He’s shocked that it doesn’t.
ES: Okay. I hate saying this. These men look a little too old for professional soccer. Maybe it’s the chain-smoking.
BJD: They were an aging team, and it is the ’70s in Britain. Self-care was basically Dunhills and Chivas Regal. I like that they give us the final grim score just as they’re screaming and fist-pumping on their way out to the field. It’s hilarious.
ES: And it’s cheap. They don’t have to show the game and crowds.
BJD: There’s nothing scarier than when the coach gets quiet, is there? He looks so unhinged and it’s so great for Michael Sheen to get to play such a nice guy/psychopath.
ES: When it comes to soccer it’s a fine line. Wait. They won. 2–1!
BJD: You just jumped up and fist-pumped like you’re watching a real game.
ES: I did! But you know I really enjoy playing much more than watching as a fan.
BJD: It’s the same with novelists. If reading other writers was a prerequisite for the job, a lot of writers would be in trouble!
ES: New topic! He just told his team to smile more. Telling people to smile does not go over well.
BJD: Especially with people from Leeds.
ES: This is really a love story between him and two men. His assistant coach is almost his first partner and Don Revie and Leeds—
BJD: His new one! I think what makes for an unhappy relationship is simply that someone chose the wrong person. This also reminds me that this is the third Timothy Spall film we’ve seen this month.
ES: We really should do the Dream Demon/Spencer double bill.
BJD: Brian Clough! This is a biopic sin. Calling the character by his full name, constantly.
ES: And in the third person.
BJD: He has the egomaniac tendencies towards that. But there’s even other characters saying things like, I have advice for you, Brian Clough.
ES: He doesn’t change in this film. I do kind of like that and that’s a very novelistic thing.
BJD: He never stops shooting his mouth off. He just refines it. And we haven’t mentioned it yet but this is a well-crafted film. Everything’s spot on for the 1970s. And the cinematography is the right kind of good looking: smoky and handsome.
ES: He can’t let go of Don Revie. He’s reading about him on the beach in Brighton. I wish he had a social media blocker to use.
BJD: When you’re starting your career it’s so easy to think you have this one special nemesis, and you don’t realize you in fact have many. You have nemesi.
ES: It’s more that it’s easy to think there’s no room for you if other people are already in those positions.
BJD: That’s a very polite way of saying I would murder my rival.
ES: Oh my God. He states his own full name while being fired! Brian Howard Clough. He one-ups biopics.
BJD: Take this scene at BBC Leeds where he’s booked to be interviewed the day he’s fired and they secretly bring on Don Revie to be interviewed beside him. This is the one thing I thought could never be historically accurate and I even said out loud. Come on! And it one hundred percent happened.
ES: This is an on-air slide tackle he’s about to experience!
BJD: What would you score these two films in a game?
ES: I don’t know. This one is the easier watch, but The Firm is such a ferocious character study, even if I watched it through my fingers.
BJD: How about 1–1?
ES: 2–1. Because The Firm would definitely cheat.
BJD: I’ll close us out with terrible announcer summary: Gary Oldman. Michael Sheen. Equally matched in their art forms. Simply at the top of their respective games. The Firm, obviously dealing with budget issues all season, but can still keep its chin up against the bigger club, whose captain, Peter Morgan, went on to earn goblets of money presenting our Queen, as a human being: a woman struggling with a career, needs, and desires.
ES: You can stop now.