
In The Beautiful Game, which for some reason has arrived on Netflix when it should be confined to the annals of history, a septuagenarian in grieving seeks to train a team of inept youngsters to participate in the Homeless World Cup. Directed by Thea Sharrock, the film bears more resemblance to a particularly unremarkable British sitcom than to Jhund and Dream, which focuses on the unfortunate being uplifted through sport.
The irreplaceable Bill Nighy plays Mortimer Molloy, who has for many years now been locked in a battle and training homeless British men. Despite the team being composed largely of British players, it is not entirely that. This includes a stateless Syrian refugee. More concerning, only one among them is able to actually play football. When Mal one day sees the lone athlete Vinny practicing on the field, he asks him to join the team. The new recruit is however reluctant to join the group; driven by the fact that it is uncomfortable to accept that things are not okay during their first meeting, he treats members of the opposite side with contempt and is angry at them for thinking that he is homeless. After an emotional encounter with his young child, he is however inspired to join Mal and the boys, especially for the World Cup in Italy.
Vinny played by Michael Ward is perhaps Christopher when he is unwilling to obey the rules just like in Nagraj Manjule’s Jhund or in Dream where this role was performed by Park Seo-joon the pop star. There are three movies that share a similar blueprint with one another but also surprised about the character and cultural depth that was probably lacking in The Beautiful Game. The filmmakers’ different sensibilities are, of course, apparent. For many reasons, as one can, Manjule was far more interested in the story within the story. In Jhund, for instance, the innocuous act of applying for a passport was a hero’s journey going through security at the airport akin to being in a Matt Damon film. However while The Beautiful Game emphasizes how its protagonists deal with challenges, Jhund shifted its focus from the challenges to the challenges.
There was really no message that the movie wanted to send, except that of the unending struggles that ingrained Indians have to get through before they can even think about being actors in their own lives. In fact Manjule’s players, just being able to leave the country was winning sufficient football was nothing but an afterthought. Less than half an hour into the screen The Beautiful Game places its characters in Rome for the World Cup regardless of all that. The other hour and a half is pretty much focused on the tournament which while is the part that you would least look forward to in such films, especially with such chaotic and dizzying cinematic representations of the sport.
The storytelling is generic and hurried. It lacks fluency, being British Premier League rather than Spanish La Liga style. “These are the people who’ve gone under, who have stories,” Mal said to Vinny as he tried to convince him to participate in this competition, his reason is a chance to regain the lost self-pride for some of these guys. And we get to know them the least details, just about sufficient as the story unfolds. A Syrian emigrant discloses how his past was another one says he is open about his use of heroin Mal himself is granted a few moments where he speaks of his deceased spouse. It’s formulaic but so what. The climax that This Beautiful Game is going to help the public build their excitement is clearly the redemption of ‘Vinny’ which is probably even worse than the arbitrary scene where the English team walks over South Africa because they arrived late and nobody saw this until everybody was ready to kick the ball.
As charismatic as Nighy is at times, he is not Amitabh Bachchan, and there are no breathtaking climaxes in Mal’s storyline either. At some point, it is as if The Beautiful Game all but abandons him as the main character and pivots to lift Vinny as the main character. It is not like this is out of nowhere but a bit of sophistication could have been welcome. There was potential here to look into the class division in England, the European refugee crisis, and the significance of second chances. But the film knows no better. There is an overemphasis on the pitch, while it ought to have borrowed a lesson from Ted Lasso and accepted that the best drama is created outside the pitch.
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