George Best: All By Himself – review

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On February 6th, 1958, British Airways Flight 609 crashed near Munich, claiming twenty lives. Amongst the dead were players from Manchester United football club. The fact that United went on to win the European Cup, the first English side to do so, a mere decade later is staggering. This information is necessary for contextualising the world in which the team’s star player, a young Northern Irish winger, became a British icon. And it also is needed in understanding quite how far he fell from grace.

George Best: All By Himself, the biographical documentary directed by Daniel Gordon, tells the story of Northern Ireland’s greatest ever footballer. Opening with the solemn tale of Angie Best, his first wife, driving past a homeless man drunkenly stumbling down the road in the rain, and realising it was her own husband, a tone of disquiet is immediately created. Quickly whisking us away to that tragic night in Munich, the stage is set for Best’s arrival. After being briefed on Best’s childhood, we are greeted with a commentary from Best himself, cut together from interviews so that it feels like he is narrating his life from beyond the grave. Detailing his love of football as a child, to his two trials with Manchester United, and his affection for the club where he made his name, we are provided with accounts from friends and teammates in a talking-heads format, backed up with commentaries and footage of actual matches.

These are the strongest parts of this documentary; grainy black and white footage and the slightly fuzzy commentaries demonstrate the sport at its most dramatic moments. We see Best’s most iconic goals, his magic touch on the pitch and the joy it must have been to watch him play. When Best slots the ball into an open net in the 1968 European Cup final against Benfica, it’s hard not to clap and cheer in the cinema.

Naturally, for every peak there’s a pit. This documentary runs through Best’s rampant, and often very public, alcoholism with full honesty. Much emotional weight is given to the second half of Best’s life – as it begins to spiral out of control after Matt Busby’s retirement – multiple attempts at sobriety, relapses, and ultimately futile attempts to restart his career in America. The famous bravado that Best lived his life with is put aside for an honest depiction of a slow and painful collapse.

But much in the same way that Best failed to recapture the magic on the pitch, this documentary begins to lose its own momentum. The anecdotal storytelling of those who knew Best personally, whilst effective in conveying how he was truly an endearing character, and a loving friend and husband, lacks detail. No real explanation is given for his behavior. Rather, it is noted that perhaps the fact that no one really stepped in to curb Best’s behavior is what led things to get out of hand to such an extent. The distance between Best and those who knew him is eluded to in the title.

Despite this perhaps shallow insight into Best’s own mind, George Best: All By Himself starts, stays, and ends in a riveting fashion. We may never get to know the real George Best, but that is not the only purpose of this documentary. Even if we never know the full story, the drama of his life, and the talent he possessed as a sportsperson and an icon of pop culture, warrant his story being told.

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