The Keeper [Blu-ray]

The Bert Trautman's story -Remembered for his heroic's in the 1956 Cup-Final playing for Manchester City against Birmingham City, agame when after an on-pitch collision, Bert carrying a serious injury (broken neck) continued to keep goal for the final 20 minutes or so of the match, a game City won 3-1.The game is the first match I remember watching live on TV as a youngster.The story tells of Bert (David Kross) as a German P.O.W in Lancaster being noticed saving penalties in the camp as a bet in return for cigarettes by St Helens Town F.C manager Jack Friar (John Henshaw) who supplied the camp from his grocery shop, John accompanied by his daughter Margaret (Fraya Mavor).St Helens on the verge of relegation needed a reliable keeper to give them any chance of survival, Bert is offered the chance to do something beyond the confines of the camp.Bert accepts the challenge but is met with distrust and indeed anger from his prospective team-mates who find playing alongside 'The Enemy' disagreeable.However, his heroics in goal makes both his fellow team and indeed the supporters forget his nationality.Though still a P.O.W he also gets to work in Jack's shop during the day alongside Margaret.When repatriation is finally offered to the P.O.W's Bert decides to stay in England, where he, as goalkeeping-hero and shopkeeper he is offered a room in the Friar home, a romance between Margaret and Bert soon develops, they will marry.Still playing for St Helens he becomes noticed by the Manchester City manager Jock Thompson (Gary Lewis) and is offered a trial by the First Division Outfit.(1949)The appointment is met with hostility by players at the club, fans and indeed the media who discover Bert had during his service during the war been awarded the Iron Cross, a fact that initially doesn't help his cause.However again, his ability between the posts soon makes Bert a firm favourite on the terraces.At home Bert and Margaret have their first child, a boy John.The couple later will meet with tragedy, when after the 1956 final while Bert is in hospital a terrible accident occurs outside of his home, John is the victim.The couple will go on to have two more sons.A superb and compelling story, telling the story of a football legend (you don't have to be a Man City supporter to appreciate the film)Well worth a viewing.

I first learned about Bert Trautmann (1923-2013) only five or six years ago when I happened to see a one-hour TV documentary of his life on YouTube (“The Bert Trautmann Story”). Thereafter I bought the book on which the documentary is based, “Trautmann’s Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend” by Catrine Clay, a book shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2010.Bert has no equal in history, the only person ever awarded the following: the Iron Cross (1942); Footballer of the Year in the English First Division (1956); Honour of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1997); and an OBE from the Queen (2004). German by birth, English by education or re-education after the war, a free spirit in nature, a gentleman in character, a pacifist who was a solider, an ambassador between two formerly warring nations. He was unique, a one-off, an extraordinary man whose life has finally been made into a vivid and beautiful biopic that further honours him here. Though of course I never met him, I have come to admire his character and courage.He was born in Bremen during the time of the Weimar Republic, hard times for Germany between the world wars. Fascism was on the rise in his country and by 1933 when Bert was 10 years old Hitler was Chancellor, a title the crazed corporal soon changed to Führer (supreme leader). Bert was a tall, strong, good-looking, athletic boy. Blond and blue-eyed, he perfectly matched and fulfilled the ideological fantasies of the Nazis. If only Germany could clone millions of Berts! Thus he was invited into Hitler Youth and thrived there because of his athletic prowess. To a child of 10 it was a wonderland of play, so he loved it. It was like the Boy Scouts with football. Of course he was brainwashed by ideology as we all are in one form or another when we are children. He happened to be German and the Nazis happened to be in power when he was young, but the two events linked in time did not make him a Nazi. In later life as an adult looking back he was just as appalled as millions of others when reflecting on those brutal times. He was used and felt betrayed. I know the feeling and so do you. Who among us has managed to avoid being ideologically exploited in life? I was indoctrinated in the Lutheran Church when I was a lad. Like Bert, it took me a long time to wake up, reach adulthood, think for myself and see the absurd fairytales and afterlife promises for what they are. “Only the educated are free,” said the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and he was absolutely right about that.None of this background appears directly in Bert’s story in the film. But I think it helps to understand who he was. The film wisely presents just a narrow slice of his life from 1944 to about 1956. Key events in this period are his capture by the British as a POW in Germany, his re-education in England, football, and marriage to a young Englishwoman, the daughter of his first football manager in Britain. So here is Bert in his twenties and early thirties, the period that made him famous in the north of England as a footballer, and indeed eventually throughout all of Britain. He became a legend, the only German whom young boys in Britain idolised and wanted to be. This created problems for some of their parents, but not for the boys. All they saw was a great man in goal and that was enough for them. And perhaps they were right, teaching the adults a lesson as children often do because of their greater honesty. They did not need ideology to love him. They knew what was true in their hearts and expressed it.Bert must have had a guardian angle looking a after him because he was a survivor. A paratrooper in the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front in Ukraine in 1942, his unit was decimated by the Russians. Only 300 out of the original 1,000 survived. Later in the war after the Allied invasion of Normandy he was sent to the Western Front. He survived that dangerous situation too, one of only 90 survivors in his regiment. He was also Harry Houdini, a master of escape, first escaping captivity from the Russians in the East then later with the French in the West. The Americans briefly held him too but he managed to slip free of them as well. Finally, with the entire German army in retreat and disarray Bert got separated from his unit and a British patrol picked him up. This time he surrendered, accepting his fate as prisoner of war, his quixotic quest to get back to Bremen finally over.But in Bert’s strangely charmed life there always seemed to be a silver lining, and the following one is quite amusing. Once he was at peace with his decision to surrender and stop running the sun seemed to smile on him. As he sat down for interrogation by the British, he was not harassed and beaten. Instead, in total wonderment to Bert, a British officer said to him, “Well, then, Fritz, fancy a cup of tea?” Bert couldn’t believe it, this simple act of humanity and consideration after the non-stop insanity and inhumanity of four years of warfare. So in my case I think he felt something special and unusual for Britain very early on. I think he fell in love with Britain from his very first encounter with it through a cup of tea. Much later on he would come to say that it was the kindness, consideration and generosity of the ordinary British people he met in Lancashire that renewed his faith in humanity and life. He couldn’t leave Britain after the war ended because he didn’t want to. In some weird sort of way he had come home to a home he had never had till the war and its aftermath gave it to him. When asked in old age if he were English or German he honestly answered that he was both but that it was England that gave him his freedom and life, so deep down he would always feel grateful to be English. Strange situation, remarkable man.In England when he and the other prisoners first arrived he was re-interrogated and classified in Norfolk. Misclassified one might say. Because Bert was in the Luftwaffe and a recipient of the Iron Cross for bravery, he was classified as a Nazi, a fervent supporter of the party. But it wasn’t true. Bert was never ideological and hated what he saw some Nazis do. It disgusted him. All he could think of was how to survive the mess of the war that he was caught up in.After Norfolk he was sent to the north — to Lancashire — and it’s there his English story really begins. At first it was all confusing, disorienting. He could speak some English, but not much. And, amusingly, the English he would eventually learn to speak was Lancastrian, not the English of the Home Counties. He learned what he was taught. But in some of the lessons given to him he also learned something important about England. In Germany he had always been told what to do, was made to understand what his duty was. Britain by contrast did not impose this mentality on him. Instead it seemed to ask him, “What do you want to do?” Like the first cup of tea, it invited him in, allowed him to be proactive in decisions affecting him. This, more than anything, made him love England. For the first time in his life he was comfortable with who he was because he was given the chance to become self-made, not the instrument of any state or ideology. He loved it. The logic was simple and Bert embraced it, its yin-yang simplicity going something like this:A free man is happy. A happy man is free.Without quite knowing how or why, Bert had come to a place where he knew he belonged. That’s why in 1948 when the Labour government under Clement Attlee declared an amnesty for all German POWs in England (an amnesty that allowed them to return to Germany) he declined the invitation to leave. He was poor, spoke broken English, had no family in Britain, but he was young and he was free. In this context, so much about him makes sense.And yet it wouldn’t have happened quite as it did if he hadn’t been the athletic acrobat and genius he was. No one in England had ever seen his style of play in goal before. Bert was not a defensive keeper. Or, correction, not exclusively defensive. He tended goal like a mid-fielder on offence might. He would leave the goalmouth and dive at the feet of defenders when he knew or thought he could beat them to the ball, and when he had the ball he seldom kicked it. Instead he was like a Greek god throwing the javelin, hurling the ball deep downfield to mid-fielders or strikers on the wings who were already on the run. All his paratrooper training and conditioning had made him incredibly strong, and he used this strength to excel in football. He was like the 12th player on the pitch, half goalie, half position player. As a secret weapon this was not kept secret for long, but no one could duplicate it. The great Gordon Banks in goal would one day later say that Bert was the inspiration for everything in football for him. Bert changed the face of English football.And of course the British loved what they saw — the energy, passion and fearlessness. Bert was brave and good, a classic example of what football and all sport should be. Once the enemy, now the local hero. There must have been moments too when Bert shook his head at the wonder of it all.I say local hero, and that was true in the early years (1946-48) when he played for a regional lower division club in Lancashire near Blackburn (St. Helens Town). He was recruited by the team’s manager when he saw Bert tending goal among prisoners in the local POW camp. So Bert’s freedom also came through sport. And he was so good at sport that local heads were turning and the word was spreading beyond St. Helens and Blackburn. So much so that by 1949 first-division clubs began to pursue him. That year (1949) he signed with Manchester City.In America, where I’m from, the national pastime and sport is not American football or basketball. These sports are extremely popular, but the soul of sport in America is baseball. At about the same time the German Bert was becoming the first foreigner to play in first-division football in Britain, the first African-American baseball player in Major League Baseball signed a contract to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The year was 1948 and his name was Jackie Robinson. Jackie broke the racist colour barrier in America. Bert broke the jingoism barrier in Britain.At first the Man City supporters were outraged. Their goalkeeper a Nazi, a paratrooper, a holder of the Iron Cross?! Bert was everything their country had fought to defeat during four years of carnage and suffering. Had management lost its mind? There were protests and boycotts. Man City suffered financially at first. But management held firm, knowing full well the quality it had in him. Bert wasted no words, doing his talking on the pitch, and naturally nothing is better than winning to win people over. The punters watched. They changed. They cheered. Their hate turned to love. A local rabbi in Manchester also spoke for the large Jewish community there when he said this man must not be judged as a symbol or emissary of his country. He’s an individual. And besides, he was not forced to stay in Britain. He desired it. He chose it. What’s to stop us from accepting him?And so they did. Accept him, that is. At first locally in the north, but eventually all over the country. The defining sporting moment came during the FA Cup Final at Wembley in 1956. Man City led in the match 3-1 with 17 minutes to go. With Bert in goal victory seemed secure, but the opposition’s assault on goal toward the end was furious. One ball at close range from a Birmingham City striker should have gone in. It would have if Bert had not been so brave. Instead of holding back he lunged forward and secured the ball. But when he did the striker’s knee hit his neck and dislocated several vertebrae in it. Bert’s neck was broken but he played on in extreme agony. Later on he would say it was all just a fog for him at that time, playing the last few minutes on instinct and auto pilot. Man City triumphed 3-1 and everyone knew Bert was the man of the match.But not until three days later was the severity of his injury understood. Six vertebrae had been displaced and one of them (the fifth one) was broken in two. He would have died or been paralysed had it not been for one more freak thing attended to by his guardian angel. The impact of the collision jammed the sixth vertebrae into the fifth, anchoring it in place. When the doctors saw the X-ray they were astonished. Bert was told he was lucky to be alive.That FA Cup Final made his name a household word in Britain but also immortalised him in Britain’s greatest sport, making him a folk hero. What courage, putting his life on the line for his team! Of course he later said that if he had known his neck was broken he would have run off the pitch right away for the dressing room. True or not, he remained in the game, and even made one or two more quality saves to preserve the victory, the only keeper in history anywhere to win a major Cup while playing with a broken neck.But life is never a fairytale. Death, carnage, suffering and madness marked his trail. First, the savagery of the war. Later, the death of his first-born child, his 5-year-old son, killed by a car in their local street. That event shattered the mind of his English wife Margaret and eventually shattered their marriage.These events come late in the film. It doesn’t proceed much beyond 1956. It begins in 1944 on the Western Front, carries on to his capture and transfer to England in 1945, and then spends most of its two hours in the years 1946 to ’49 when he is in Lancashire, first in a POW camp, then later as a free man working on farms, repairing cars and machinery, and of course playing football.In these years we also see his private life and love with Margaret, the daughter of the manager of St. Helens Town, his local team. Their romance is not straightforward at all. In fact it’s far worse than just tentative. Underlying it at first is Margaret’s open hostility. She can’t see the man — only what he represents in her mind. Bert understands this but can’t help loving her, and it is this, his own attitude, that begins to soften her own. By the time of their wedding (not shown in the film) he is just a man, a loving man, not an adversary, foreigner, ex-soldier.If there is forgiveness and redemption in life, it comes through love. Hence Margaret’s love for Bert is one of the great joys of this film. It is not sentimental. It is heartening. It took courage for her to love as she did and we watch her very real struggle with it in this fine film.Of course the story is about Bert and his accomplishments as a footballer. But it’s not only or even mainly a story about sport. It goes deeper than this. It’s basically a drama about human dignity, of finding ways to forgive and love. In this way it’s inspiring and empowering, encouraging one to look for goodness in others and life.If war is a form of hatred, peace is the place of love. It’s a wonderful thing Germany and Britain are no longer at war. Now it’s Germany’s job to be patient and to invite Britain back to Europe after Britain recovers its senses and sees the delusions of Brexit for what they are. This may take years, but it will eventually happen. No man and no country is an island, even if Britain happens to be one. Britain once held out its arms to Bert Trautmann and Bert was grateful for it. Germany will do the same with Britain when the time comes, inviting it to come home, and Britain will thank it humbly for remaining steadfast and true to it.