Beckham: Beautiful. Photo / Getty Images
Reviewers Greg Bruce and Zanna Gillespie watch Beckham.
HE SAW
It would be so easy to make a documentary about David Beckham. An hour of nothing more than tight shots of his extremely beautiful face set to music would be some of the most compelling television of the year. Add to that a ludicrously extensive video archive of football, paparazzi stuff, news footage, interviews, talk shows, endless public appearances, previous documentaries and so on, chuck in some new interviews with the Beckhams and their famous friends, make sure to ask about the alleged affair, edit it all together in rough chronological order, set up a meeting with Netflix and, hey presto, financial independence, retire early.
Beckham is such an inextricable part of the culture that it’s hard not to be invested in his life, especially for those of us who remember when his haircuts were front-page news. Beginning in the late 90s, continuing into the present, and carrying on presumably forever, his is a story that sells. So yes, you could make a paint-by-numbers documentary about him, and we’d all watch and probably enjoy it, but we’d walk away from it at the end and never think about it again.
But here we are nearly two weeks since Beckham was released on Netflix and it’s still the talk of the town, buzzed about all over the internet and around office watercoolers and on family WhatsApp groups. And the reason for that is because Fisher Stevens, until now best known for his extraordinary neck:head ratio as Logan Roy’s PR man in Succession, is a truly extraordinary interviewer.
Yes, the documentary has got all the other stuff mentioned above, and is a brilliantly edited, compelling story of a life that has both shaped and mirrored our times, and a large part of the media buzz has been about the affair, but that affair is a few minutes in four hours of television from which you never want to look away - the best celebrity documentary in years.
Ever since he emerged on to the scene with his floppy hair and excellent teeth, Beckham’s moral character has been seen as lagging behind his extraordinary good looks. Stevens’ ability to get his protagonist’s guard down and vulnerability up shows we might have been a bit hasty with that one. Sitting with Beckham and those close to him for nearly four hours not only reminds you why you should never judge people, but makes for television that is funny, sad, sometimes gut-wrenching, but ultimately – and most importantly – enlightening. We might have watched David Beckham for decades but it’s only now, thanks to Fisher Stevens, that we really get to see him.
SHE SAW
It’s an obsession, football, an unhealthy one. For my 6-year-old - who has just completed his second season of the sport - it’s just beginning. He’s studying the greats, watching videos of their most memorable moments, mimicking their celebration dances and kicking a soccer ball into the furniture while glaring at me with a “what are you going to do about it?” look in his eye. At night, as he’s falling asleep, he recites their names: Neymar, Lewandowski, Messi, Ronaldo ... Once, when he asked me for probably the 47th time that day who my favourite football player was, I said “David Beckham.”
“David Beckham?” He replied. “Is he good?”
The Beckham series certainly insists that he is. It’s a football documentary first and foremost - there’s a lot of football and a lot of aggressively emotive music with the football - but it’s also a portrait of a marriage and that’s what the media has really jumped on: the affair. Correction: the “alleged” affair. It almost certainly happened though they dance around ever saying it explicitly. Affair or not, being married to a footballer seems insufferable. You are married to them but they are married to the game.
Beckham admits to making some selfish decisions during his career. For contracts he moved from Manchester to Spain to Los Angeles to Milan to Paris to Miami (sort of) - Victoria and the kids followed sometimes, stayed behind others. He had an obsession and it came first. No one can blame him for it because his father had an obsession that he forced upon David with hours and hours of relentless and cruel training.
In some ways, Beckham must be a masochist. He has learned to thrive on maltreatment. Firstly from his dad, then from his coaches - he liked them strict - and then from the fans. The treatment he received from English football fans after the little tap that got him the red card at the 1998 World Cup - death threats, being spat on and abused in the street, lynched effigies in pubs, jeering crowds chanting insults including “Posh Spice takes it up the a***” - would be enough to make anyone leave the sport - but not Beckham. Obsessed. If we could harness the energy - anger and elation - of football fans and players, we could solve the climate crisis.
Greg spent much of the four episodes telling me which of the many games that were replayed in the series he’d watched live. He’d had an obsession and somehow moved past it but with the combination of this nostalgia-filled documentary series and our 6-year-old’s influence, the beast may have been awakened.
There are many theories around what causes toxic masculinity but as yet I have not heard this one: a significant portion of male insecurity is born of the soccer ball-shaped hole in their heart where their dream of becoming a professional football player died. Discuss.
Beckham is streaming now on Netflix.
Washington Post: Sweatpants? No. But elastic waistbands? Absolutely.