Jimmy Gribble: Poetry and nostalgia for the best football movie

A World Cup is certainly unusual and a game of football that has become almost exclusively a business. Do you want to rediscover the once taste of football? Then (re) you see Jimmy Gribble. An unknown and beautiful movie.

Football in cinema is the subject of complex transliteration. At least according to the general opinion, which among other things determines ne Damned United By Tom Hooper, the best movie about the most popular sport in Europe. That may be true, but this movie, which chronicled the heroic deeds of a great trainer like Brian Clough, remains a biographical film. An easier genre limitation to the concept of cinematography, at least when it comes to narrative. However, sifting through the dusty video library of our football and cinema memory, there is another football movie that deserves attention. In fact, it deserves your full attention. Because? Simple: It’s the best football movie ever made. How could it be semi-anonymous? Well, at least in Italy it was never distributed, and the writer saw it for the first time on Tele +. Realize: literally a century ago. If we’re curious, the secret has been revealed: let’s talk about it Jimmy Gribble (original title, There is only one Jimmy Gribble) by John Hay who, after this 2000 dated gem, hasn’t had a – so to speak – sparkling career.

All the more reason to watch his film (you can find it streaming on Mediaset Infinity+), especially today that we’re dealing with football that has now changed significantly: an unusual and controversial World Cup in Qatar, fans more attentive to decades than goals, the creeping feeling that footballers Football They become living companies, ignoring sports and athletic honesty. And so the loss of that purity and that epicness as a function of video game excitement. Tricks, upgrades and skills. Objects completely at odds with the essence of the sporting gesture, the intuition of the champions, and the fleeting difference between victory and defeat. And for that, Jimmy Gribble It takes us back to the glory days, to the pozzolana fields, to the rainy and damp English county, where football among the red-brick buildings was the true Protestant prayer. In particular, Hay’s film is the perfect slide that encapsulates the beauty of football’s wasted and faltering imagination.

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Bobby Brewer shoes

If the nostalgic effect plays an essential role, Jimmy Gribble It’s a movie not to be missed either because of its narrative structure, hovering between fantasy and sports movies. The protagonist is Jimmy (Louis Mackenzie disappeared from circulation) who, like any 15-year-old boy, has two loves: one for a girl, the other for football. But Jimmy’s life is complicated. His mother (Gina McKee) loves him dearly, even if she wastes time pursuing questionable relationships. Not only that, Jimmy is being pursued by bullies. For such a noble dreamer as himself, weaknesses are real targets for older and stupider children. We forgot that Jimmy is a Manchester City fan. Suppose today there would be nothing to be ashamed of, given the team they have become (thanks to the money), but in 2000 City were a team of underdogAnd by sifting through the data, we realize that at the end of the season they’re down. Noble, proletarian, romantic and popular team. strangers To the core. But still (was) a losing team, like losers.

Here is the first short circuit, the first smile: in twenty years, City have become the richest club in the world, far from the values ​​Jimmy cheers. This is Jimmy who loves football and is gifted with football. Unfortunately, however, he suffers from classic performance anxiety: he fails to show his skill when he takes the field, and he attracts violent attention from bullies. Then the turning point: an old lady gives him a pair of tattered shoes that had belonged to an old player in town, Bobby Brewer. The magic slippers will give him the right confidence, but it will be Coach Eric (Robert Carlyle) to gain confidence and awareness on the football field. Mixing good vibes, lightness and a soundtrack that alternates The Stone Roses with Fatboy Slim and The Chemical Brothers in their show with Neil Gallagher (huge Nationals fan!), Vision Jimmy Gribble We reconcile with the game of football. And he does so with skill and gentleness, with a narrative intuition and sheer knowledge of his own means. Not over passionate yet.

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Best football movie

Watching it again now, John Hay’s film explains how football has truly been an added value for our days, how much it is an anthropological factor and synonymous with union and sharing. Obviously we don’t want to be monotonous, the idea of ​​contemporary footwear has nothing to do with the feelings it once had. We are more detached, more dispersed, and more rushed. It’s unimaginable to play for hours and hours underwater, and not care about the world when the whole world was with you: a bunch of friends, a colorful T-shirt and a rolling ball. Chanting as a passion rather than a duty, leave the work to others, because a dream is priceless. Where did that desire go? Where did those unforgettable moments go? So Jimmy Gribble We can sum it up in a dazzling exchange of jokes. “What could be better than United?” – “Manchester City!”. Another era, another story, another magic of the best football movie that (almost) no one knows.