I Believe in Miracles (2015) Reviews

• Endearing Documentary on a footballing 'Miracle'

  BJJManchester2015-10-22

  'I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES' tells the remarkable story of Nottingham Forest FC and their catapulting into footballing folklore in the mid-late 1970's,thanks to arguably the most flamboyant,controversial yet charismatic and talented manager in English football history,the late Brian Clough,who took them to the height of success not just in England but Europe as well. The movie starts when Clough's career was seemingly at the crossroads;after winning the English League Championship with Forest's East Midlands rivals Derby County in 1972,Clough departed along with his assistant Peter Taylor after a series of feuds with the club's directors,and after a brief and unsuccessful spell at Brighton and Hove Albion,rather surprisingly became manager at Leeds United,a club he had often fiercely criticised publicly,along with its manager Don Revie,who ironically hailed from the same industrial town as Clough himself,Middlesbrough.Equally unsurprisingly,Clough's tenure was short-lived in the light of such mutual hostility,and the fractious TV interview alongside Revie is perhaps an appropriate way for the film to begin,progressing from the ridiculous to the sublime. By the beginning of 1975,Clough was appointed manager of Nottingham Forest,a club with past traditions in the FA Cup (having won the trophy twice),but not the sort you would expect to win League Championships,as indeed Derby were until they triumphed three years earlier;Derby themselves would go on to win the league at the end of that same season with a different manager (Dave Mackay),whereas Forest ended in mid- table mediocrity in the then second division and expected to remain so or even worse,Brian Clough or not. However,the following two seasons saw a gradual improvement,to the extent that Forest won promotion to the first division,albeit narrowly in third place.Not much was expected of them in the new season,being made up of apparent footballing journeymen,cheap signings and unheralded also-rans,with such names as John McGovern,John Robertson,Martin O'Neill,Larry Lloyd,Kenny Burns and Tony Woodcock.Yet thanks to Clough's extraordinary skills of man-management and attractive football,he moulded them and others (most notably goalkeeper Peter Shilton) into a championship winning squad by the season's end,and even more astonishingly went on to win the European Cup two years in succession,acquiring the first million pound signing,Trevor Francis,along the way,who scored the winner in the 1979 final against Swedish club Malmo,in perhaps the least fashionable coda in the tournament's history. The story seems woefully far-fetched to the uninitiated yet it did actually happen,and it is all likeably put together in a straightforward but efficient manner by director Jonny Owen,via pithy and amusing reminiscences by long retired players like Burns,Shilton,Lloyd and O'Neill interspersed with highlights of such heady days.The one who comes out of it best of all is Brian Clough himself,who could be both maddening and enchanting,belligerent yet charming,overtly confrontational but intensely articulate,and never remotely dull. Inevitably,because director Owen keeps the story down to those remarkable years between 1977 and 1980,many aspects relating to this period and after are conveniently skipped over;the hooliganism that plagued English football at the time,his eventual acrimonious falling out with Taylor,his steady decline due to his alcohol problem and Forest's relegation in his final year in charge,plus allegations of financial misdeeds in his later years.But this was perhaps the right thing to do as the film intends to project a relentless feel-good factor,and it achieves it all very enjoyably with a warm glow by it's finish,helped on immeasurably by a Funk/Northern Soul soundtrack comprising of such tunes of the era which is very well judged and executed,adding to the purveying atmosphere of nostalgia. In these days of billionaire benefactors and opulent signings of players from every corner of the globe,this is a timely reminder that the underdog can occasionally triumph against all the odds,thanks to team spirit,outstanding management and attractive football which is genuinely inspiring.And with the likes of an individual like Brian Clough no longer with us,it looked as though it would never happen again,yet barely six months after the film was released, Forest's East Midlands rivals Leicester City performed a footballing miracle of their own when they won the Premier League for the first time in their history with the affable,charming Italian Claudio Ranieri at the helm.But we can still celebrate and enjoy such victories in years past too with such a thoroughly endearing film as this. Rating:8 out of 10.

• The greatest football film ever made? I think so

  in-chaos-we-trust2016-03-18

  Brian Clough...the man, the legend, there aren't enough documentaries or films about the tandem he and Peter Taylor formed...with the absolutely insane achievements they conquered. Absolutely impossible these days...for a team to get promoted, and then win the 1st division league, 2 league cups and 2 UCL is just the stuff dreams are made of, utterly impossible nowadays, exception made for Leicester...maybe, season ain't over yet. So the film tells the story from the main protagonists perspective, holding nothing back in a humorous tone, a journey back in time to the days of The Beautiful Game, where you really didn't need to work so much on tactics, where you could have a drink before the match, play a game after Sunday roast...the good days. An absolute feel good, whether you love football or not.

• Brian Clough - O.B.E. - Old Big Ed - Legend.

  Spikeopath2016-01-08

  To football fans in the United Kingdom, the name Brian Clough needs no introduction or building up. Thanks to the release of The Damned United in 2009 his name got noticed outside of Britain, I Believe in Miracles is the perfect follow up to that movie, a sort of explanation as to why there has been a film and documentary about the man and his charges. Director Jonny Owen assembles members of the great Nottingham Forest (always Notingham, never Notts) side of the late 1970s, interviews the key players and gets brilliant anecdotes out of them. Concurrently he offers up archive footage and a bitch funky period musical score. Clough is the leader, whose mantra is not one of assembling super stars, but of actually putting a team of men together and asking them to work hard, believe in themselves and be all that they can be. This is not Hollywood, every inch of this doc is true, no artistic licence here. The team is a mixture of smokers and jokers, drinkers and jinkers, cloggers and sloggers all responding to Clough's (and his equally important side-kick Peter Taylor) less than normal football training and management methods. Everything here goes against the grain of today's football managers, I mean what manager today would run his men through nettles and then go for a pint with them afterwards?! Players smoking at half time, surely not? Wonderful. This is a true underdog story, a film for footie fans to rejoice in - regardless of who any of us in our tribal leanings support in British football. 9/10

• "We have an Inside Left who'll turn them inside out!"

  shakercoola2018-07-04

  A marvellous documentary that was a long time coming for a certain British audience of football followers. Nottingham Forest, a football team languishing in England's second tier made achievements in football that have never been equalled, not even by Leicester City FC in recent times. What makes this documentary work is that it's a story about the unlikely winner, and a tale about personailities: a team of yet unproven talent led by a bombastic figure who was was ridiculed for his abrasive, forthright opinions, Brian Clough. It was he, and his Assistant Peter Taylor, who drive the narrative with force and panache. The film concentrates on the psychology of sport, the simple methods of man-management and organisation and the courage of the footballers to believe their dreams can come true. A wealth of amusing anecdotes from former players play as a humorous subversion of the modern day game and its perceived excesses and strict club management of its player's reputations. The answer to success has always been there all along: team spirit. Where many football documentaries appeal to their own supporters mostly, this film has a wider appeal. There is an interesting epilogue to the film about modern footballers in context of the game in the 1970s.

• Feelgood Documentary That Might Have been Conceived Better

  l_rawjalaurence2015-12-11

  I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES tells the story of a footballing miracle, for the most part achieved without spending vast amounts of money. In 1974 Brian Clough was sacked as manager of Leeds United after only 45 days ( a subject explored in Peter Morgan's THAT DAMNED UNITED). At a low point in an otherwise distinguished career, he took over at Nottingham Forest, then a mid-table Second Division club with few aspirations. Within a short time he not only secured promotion to the old First Division, but took the club to two consecutive triumphs in the European Champions Cup. Jonny Owen's documentary tells this story with contributions from many of the players involved including John Robertson, John O'Hare, Archie Gemmill, Larry Lloyd, Garry Birtles and Kenneth (aka Kenny) Burns. To be honest, their comments are roughly similar in tone, attesting to Clough's remarkable skill as a person manager, allied to a naive belief that soccer is at heart a simple game played with passion and commitment. With Peter Taylor at his side (renewing a partnership that worked highly successfully at Derby County), Clough created a genuine team wherein everyone played for one another, for the most part with players who hitherto had led undistinguished careers. He did make some big-name signings such as the first £1m. transfer involving Trevor Francis, but otherwise he made effective use of low-cost players. Clough was also a highly effective media performer. In these days of anodyne comments mediated through club media officers, it's refreshing to see just how blunt Clough actually was. He had a unique ability to answer the interviewer's' often banal questions, as well as point out the media's prejudices against Nottingham Forest for being an "unfashionable" club. On the other hand he was an incurable optimist, projecting a positive view of the future that could inspire players and viewers alike. The story told in I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES is an effective one; the presentation less so. Director Owen's penchant for using late Seventies/ early Eighties music as a soundtrack is a good idea, but sometimes becomes intrusive, deflecting our attention away from the (highly entertaining) footage of Forest's games. The film seems too concerned to fit the narrative into wearyingly familiar tropes; hence when Forest play Cologne (Köln) in the first European Cup campaign, Owen sees the entire event as a replay of World War II - Britain against Germany - and uses the theme from THE GREAT ESCAPE. By the late Seventies memories of the War were becoming fainter and fainter as Britain tried to make its way in the EEC. The film's ending seems somewhat rushed: we learn little about Forest's second European Cup campaign; nor do we find out about Clough's later career at Forest, when he fell out with Peter Taylor and suffered the humiliation of the club's being relegated. Nonetheless the story is an entertaining one, an evocation of a time when soccer was not the money-bloated sport it seems to be today.