The Keep­er

Wher­ev­er Bert Traut­mann went, every­one asked about his injury. Before the death of the Ger­man goal­keep­er in 2013, his tri­umphant per­for­mance in the 1956 FA Cup Final earned him the title of ​‘Man City leg­end’. Sev­en­teen min­utes before the end of the game, a vio­lent col­li­sion sent Traut­mann down in sear­ing pain, but he got back up and car­ried on play­ing. Four days lat­er, doc­tors con­firmed he had bro­ken his neck.

The sto­ry of his life is illus­trat­ed in Mar­cus H Rosenmüller’s The Keep­er, a roman­tic biopic about the goalkeeper’s jour­ney from Ger­man para­troop­er to nation­al trea­sure. The film expands on more than just the moment he made sport­ing his­to­ry, lean­ing on his rela­tion­ship with his first wife, Mar­garet Fri­ar (Freya Mavor), and the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of his time in the War with the will to become a British hero.

While scep­tics reject­ed Traut­mann because of his ori­gins, imme­di­ate­ly dis­miss­ing him as a ​‘Nazi trai­tor’, the foot­baller worked to dis­tance him­self from this ide­ol­o­gy, admit­ting he went to war at a young age, before real­is­ing what he was get­ting into, or who he was fight­ing for.

Fab­ri­cat­ed sequences pluck Traut­mann (a tall and stur­dy David Kross) from the POW camp in which he’s serv­ing his time, to play foot­ball on week­ends for St Helen’s FC in 1944. John Hen­shaw is con­vinc­ing and com­i­cal, as he por­trays the red-faced, big-heart­ed ama­teur coach (and future father-in-law), Jack Fri­ar, head­hunt­ing the young foot­baller and estab­lish­ing his sense of pri­or­i­ties. ​“It’s either foot­ball or hard labour,” he tells Bert.

But Trautmann’s psy­cho­log­i­cal reck­on­ing is brought to the fore, broad­en­ing the film’s appeal through com­pas­sion­ate themes of pride and loy­al­ty – on the pitch, in the city, at the din­ner table. The romance between star-crossed lovers Bert and Mar­garet is han­dled ten­der­ly, in no small part thanks to the owing com­pas­sion shared between the two young actors.

As Mar­garet, Mavor soft­ens the prej­u­dice around Bert’s past, as she speaks up for her coun­try as well as her hus­band. In moments of tragedy, her body lan­guage stiff­ens and increas­es the stakes, offer­ing cred­i­ble empa­thy in what could have been an exces­sive­ly for­mu­la­ic melodrama.

An opti­mistic through-line char­ac­teris­es the film, only sewing in fleet­ing flash­backs, main­ly of Man­ches­ter City fans when they learn about the past of the man hired to replace their beloved goal­keep­er, Frank Swift. The focus is main­tained on Bert’s skill and deter­mi­na­tion, as well as his first seri­ous rela­tion­ship. This helps to build an image of a well-round­ed hero, but it omits the less exem­plary parts of his life, name­ly an estranged daugh­ter and two more mar­riages fol­low­ing his divorce from Mar­garet in 1972.

The joy of play­ing foot­ball is rhymed with the weight­less­ness of danc­ing. There is an empha­sis on the impor­tance of the moment, focus­ing ener­gy on those ash­es of joy in motion instead of dwelling on the more trudg­ing points of his­to­ry. It’s not quite an exhaus­tive­ly truth­ful biopic, but The Keep­er suc­cess­ful­ly sparks inter­est beyond the realm of City fans – and cel­e­brates how for­give­ness and per­sis­tence can bring home more than just football.