Ehrgeiz Review of The Miracle of Bern

The Miracle of Bern (2003)

good movie, but out of Germany nobody probably would care ...

[24 October 2003]

The movie was much better than I expected. It has some flaws, but I still would give it a 8 out of 10. The movie is about the world championship 1954, when the national soccer team won its first world cup. Though you cant make a movie fully out of soccer scenes, the main focus is on a boy who is a huge soccer fan and carries the ball and training clothes for his idol, Germanys star forward Helmut Rahn. The boys father was in the war captured in russia. When he returns, it is like he is alienated to his family. But in the end he sticks together with his son, and they drive to the final in the switzerland (the boy thinks, Rahn could not win an important game without him at his side). There is also a sub-plot with a soccer reporter and his wife (which does not like soccer, but joins him to the Switzerland), which is a bit pointless, but has an excellent performance by young actress Katharina Wackernagel. And there are a lot of scenes about the Bundestrainer Sepp Herberger and his soccer team, which are to me the highlight of the movie. They are very funny, and the editors found a lot of actors who look very similar to the original players. There are some scenes which depict some ideas about german history and would any historician probably turn to rage, but that does not matter a lot. Would this movie be of any interest for people out of Germany? Well, I think, no. One funny thing is the lot of german dialects that are spoken here. And the movie works better if you know something about german history and the details of the world championship (a lot Germans know them). In many other countries, soccer is not as popular. It would be the same reason why american baseball movies (for example) would not work here.