AUGUST 3 2019 LISTENER 57
THE KEEPER
directed by Marcus H RosenmüllerS
ports films are often formulaic: an
athlete from humble beginnings is
recognised as a burgeoning talent,
then faces some kind of crisis before
overcoming the doubters in triumphal
fashion. The trick is to outsmart the for-
mula and overcome
the cliché.
The Keeper, at the
very least, has unique-
ness going for it:
retelling the true story
of Bernhard “Bert”
Trautmann, a German
paratrooper and
prisoner of war who,
after choosing not to be repatriated at the
end of World War II, went on to become
a venerated Manchester City goalkeeper.
He entered footballing folklore when he
played the final 20 minutes of the 1956 FA
Cup final with a broken neck.
Mercifully, this biopic isn’t so much
about football – only once do we get aspeech about the game resembling “a
wonderful dance”. Rather, it probes the
sometimes understandable, sometimes
inchoate prejudices of the British public in
the immediate aftermath of the war. Traut-
mann (David Kross, The Reader) is largely
shunned, except on the football field,
and is subject to predictable name-calling
(“Kraut”, “Fritz”, etc). When his signing to
Man City is announced, some 20,000 fans
rally outside the team’s home with taunts
of “Nazi” and “war criminal”.
Which is fair enough: Trautmann was in
the Hitler Youth, served for three years on
the Eastern Front, escaped captivity twice,
earned an Iron Cross and witnessed an
SS death squad in action. The film seems
unwilling, however, to confront these
truths head-on, preferring to stick firmly
within the boundaries of melodrama.
And there are questions that go largely
unaddressed: did football fans eventually
forgive Trautmann’s Nazi
past only because he was a
good goalie? What of the
man’s reckoning with his
own time in uniform? The
film brushes up against
such difficult subjects,
but doesn’t venture any
deeper.
Although enjoyable
enough in its predictable ebbs and flows,
The Keeper can only flit around the edges
of the controversy implicit in its subject.
In the end, it probes post-war Anglo-
German relations with about as much
subtlety as an episode of ’Allo ’Allo.
IN CINEMAS NOW
James RobinsThe gloves
stay on
A drama of a Nazi
POW who kept goal
for Man City never
risks getting offside.
THE PUBLIC
directed by Emilio EstevezT
he last time Emilio Estevez was
locked up in a library was 1985’s
The Breakfast Club, where he spent a
high-school detention and qualified as a
member of the Brat Pack. In The Public,
an older, deadly earnest Estevez is back
among the shelves, directing and starring
in a drama about a group of homeless
people holing up in a Cincinnati public
library overnight during a cold snap.
Estevez’s mild-mannered librarian decides
to help the group as they occupy, aptly,
the social-sciences section.
A police, political and media storm
quickly erupts and Estevez’s Stuart Good-
son is thrust into the spotlight and up
against the officialdom of Alec Baldwin’s
police negotiator and Christian Slater’s
mayoral candidate.
Estevez has his heart in the right place
in a movie advocating for libraries as
bastions of democracy, which also offers
a commentary on homelessness, mental
illness, global warming and America’s
opioid crisis, while delivering a case study
in broadcast-media superficiality and a
primer on the works of John Steinbeck.
Those sermons come with an impres-
sive congregation – the film’s ensemble
also includes Michael Kenneth Wil-
liams as the homeless group’s ringleader
and Jeffrey Wright as the library boss.
But other than Estevez’s Goodson,
whose backstory becomes one of the
movie’s many credibility-strainers, the
movie doesn’t offer much in the way
of character development to anyone.
An amusingly rousing and surprising
finale helps make The Public moderately
entertaining, but, as a movie, this library
tale feels as if it’s been misfiled from the
television-episode section.
IN CINEMAS AUGUST 1
Russell BaillieFilms are rated out of 5:
(abysmal) to (amazing)SHORT TAKES
Did football fans
eventually forgiveTrau t ma n n ’s N a z i
past only because hewas a good goalie?
Skirting controversy:
David Kross in The Keeper.