The Keeper

A truly heartwarming story of reconciliation and the human condition. I watched this film in the Cinema in St. Helens. A town that is close to my heart and that features in Bert Trautmann's story before his time playing for Manchester City.

This movie is about so much more than football. I'm largely disinterested in the beautiful game but even I was bowled over by the brilliant humour and heartwarming story of redemption and reconciliation.

Watch this movie, tell your friends about it and talk about it. It deserves to be seen both on its own merit and as one of the few films to represent working class northerners in a human light, displaying their unique sense of humour and kindness as well as dealing with the emotional fallout of war in a mature way.

My Review The Keeper rating 7:5

It's unusual but this is almost 2 reviews in one unintentionally though but both The Keeper and The Last Quarter Documentary have issues in common.

The Keeper or Trautmann as it's known on IMBD is based on a true character .

I'd never heard of Bert Trautmann why would I? I've never been into football heroes English or Australian.

This week though I'm much more knowledgeable about 2 footballers Adam Goodes ,the famous Sydney Swans footballer after watching the excellent and confronting documentary The Final Quarter and The Keeper about a famous Manchester United Goal Keeper Bert Trautmann.

Both these men talented Sporting heroes sustained continuous insults and crowd abuse booing and jeering at their matches and media publicity reporting negatively about their character and ethnicity.

Bert Trautmann a released German Prisoner of War and extremely talented goal keeper for his participation in the 2nd World War as an Iron Cross awarded Luftwaffe Pilot . Australian Adam Goodes an indigenous First Nation football hero who dared to take a proud stand of Solidarity with his people and in doing so exposed himself to the ugly underbelly of racial vilification and continual booing and insults from the mass crowds at his matches.

The Keeper is a very good film, not great but only a few are these days however it's extremely entertaining and interesting and even if you're not a football fan of great human interest.

I read up a little about the true life events of Bert Trautmann and the script is pretty factual regarding the period of his life that the movie covers ,which saw him play as goalkeeper for Manchester City from 1949 to 1964.

Trautmann is played so well by a very handsome charismatic German actor David Kross who I remember from the excellent 2008 award winning movie The Reader .Freya Mayor gives a lovely performance in the role of Margaret, Bert's first wife and John Henshaw is also very impressive as Margaret's father Jack.

Good directing ,good script ,good acting interesting story and proof again that attitudes and prejudices remain the same even with decades of time separating them and that the ugliness of an angry crowd is a very scary and disturbing mass of negative emotions.

My dad was in the POW camp with Bert and married a local girl (my mum) from Liverpool! I knew they'd had a hard time because my dad was seen as the enemy and my mum as a traitor, but this film is so beautifully told and it brought it home to me! It's both funny and deeply emotional, but most of all it's about reconciliation and acceptance! Obviously there's a little poetic license, but that adds to the film! It had me in tears, Highly recommended!

Quite often in sports biopics, the story far super cedes their sporting achievements. This couldn't be any more true in the case of Bert Trautmann as his fascinating story gets told here; becoming a hero to many Englishman not so long after fighting to kill them.

What this film succeeds in is balancing when the right time for poignancy is and when to include some levity. What lets it down is the pacing. There were a few times where I felt the wrong moments were being drawn out, where more important and interesting moments were being rushed through too quickly.

You don't need to be a football fan to enjoy it, it's a human interest story above all else.

Once again what could have been an excellent film was ruined for me by a script written by people who were not born until decades later. I was growing up in the North of England at that time, and the period covered my childhood and teens. I cannot speak for the men but the F___ word was NEVER used by women or in mixed company at that time NEVER, EVER! The first time I heard used at all I was in my 20's and the user got a severe reprimand. Nor did women at that time discuss sexual matters as freely as the young women in the film. It just wasn't done, was considered 'dirty talk' and the women were considered 'fast'. Otherwise the film was very enjoyable, if a little too manipulative. One encounter left out when Trautmann broke his neck he was being congratulated by Prince Philip after the game, who remarked on the injury as Trautmann was holdng his neck. One thing the filmmakers did get right was the way they showed the football scenes and the way it was back then, when players kept their day jobs, and spectators at local pitches stood to watch the match. There may have been seats, but we could never afford them. When I see the way football has become a huge business today, with astromical salaries, prima donna players, luxury stadiums and changing rooms, somehow I think we lost out and the simple game was better. To summarise, I really would like to see film makers cut down on the use of offensive language, particularly in flims set before the 21st century.