Director: Will Gorski
Running time: 1hr 6mins
Will Gorski’s documentary follows the women’s football team of Denver North High School on a historic run to the State Championship semi-finals. I have to evaluate this film on two very different levels – because this is més que un documental.
As someone who has played football, and have only recently been able to record any of my own exploits (in extremely low-resolution phone footage), I have come to realise how amazing that opportunity is. I might have missed my ‘best’ years as a goalkeeper by a long way (not that I was ever even remotely as good as the players in this film), but when the time does come to hang up my boots – somewhere in my early 70s – being able to see my younger self diving around, and being left bloodied and bruised in the goal-frame, having given my all, will give me a great sense of achievement.
To the players and staff involved in the Vikings’ remarkable season, being able to watch some of their finest moments on a football pitch back in high definition will be a priceless experience. There are spiderlike saves from the goalkeeper, there are brutal sliding tackles that would make Franco Baresi weep with pride. And then there is the absolute screamer of an equaliser in the team’s semi-final. As we go through the experience with the team, these are moving moments for us – but just imagine how the players will feel, getting to see those highlights in all their glory! On one basis, arguably the most important basis, then, We Are Denver North is worth its weight in gold.
Sadly, you wouldn’t need to be the psychic goalkeeper who the Vikings unfortunately encounter in a climactic penalty shootout, to know that there is a but coming.
In terms of a montage which would probably make people in Denver North cry happy tears, this is great. But I’m here to review films on the basis of communication, and storytelling, not just on the basis of how they make their subjects feel.
On that basis, there are a number of fronts on which We Are Denver North is caught offside. And not just by a toe.
First, and possibly most damagingly for a sports documentary; this is simply too static. From the very first moment, we are subjected to a long speech by the coach, aiming to galvanise the players. The scene goes on for minutes, with the manager speaking to a circle, half of which we cannot see, as he insists that they should come together as a team. But there is no context. We don’t know these players, or what any of this means to them. We don’t know the results of previous games yet. So, we don’t understand the stakes. If Gorski is going to insist on editing non-chronologically, then he needs to accompany this with action shots, or any viewers from outside Denver North will check out. At the very least, the coach’s talk about hardships, and hurdles that the team needs to get over need to be accompanied by some action-shots – a montage of hard-hitting tackles, near-misses or tear-stained final whistles.
At the same time, there are strange omissions from match highlights. The first game we see North Denver play, it seems like we are being shown a stalemate, where neither team can break the deadlock. But after a few frustrating moments in front of goal, the camera cuts to a scoreboard reading 3-3. While we see the final two goals, it would have been better to have used all of those first six to help underline the coach’s opening speech – the trials and tribulations the team is facing, but also their strengths as a single unit, and as a collective of very talented individuals.
There is also a visible lack of experience when it comes to filming sport. The camera is clearly a very expensive piece of equipment, and whatever it is pointed at provides an image that absolutely sings. But the trade off is that it seems Gorski and camera operators Sean Mish, Silas Smith, Smilla Hattens and Lewis North only had the budget for one unit. This means that the choice of where to place the camera becomes extremely important. In the end, they plump for setting up shop near one set of goals – which yields some brilliant shots of action when it happens close by, but probably contributed to the decision not to show goals for the Vikings when shooting at the frame at the far end – which would have either been obscured by bodies, or looked a little grainy. A more experienced sports camera person – told they only had one camera – would probably have opted instead for a seat at the half-way line; ideally perched on some kind of balcony. It might yield slightly less polished action shots all around, but it would at least offer useable footage in all directions of play. (Also, penalty shootouts are always best filmed from behind the shooting player – not from the bottom-left of the goal – although the sequence still works as it is.)
There are also moments where the footage cuts to black, seemingly at random, as if either there was supposed to be a clip edited in that the production team forgot to add, or they caught one of their number in frame, and had no better ideas as to how to disguise it. Sound continues to play as the darkness lingers conspicuously – and it leaves you wondering if what you are seeing is in fact the finished article. That is generally a feeling to avoid, if you expect an audience to pay to see your film at a festival.
All that makes it sound like there is a dearth of footage to work with. But to reiterate what I said at the start, the opposite is true. Even with the set-up only focusing on one goal properly, one of the film’s greatest strengths is that the footage has still captured so many wonderful moments. There is a glut of heart-stopping footage to work with from the Vikings’ on-pitch escapades. The fact that none of it finds its way into talking-head sections (and the coach’s long, long speeches) though, is a problem. Those segments are not especially interesting, they don’t offer much for us to relate to, and so they need something to help us feel like they aren’t simply a drag. The film’s run-time could be cut in half if any of it was chopped and edited together – and it would also be a much more enjoyable spectacle for the neutral.
There are also grating inconsistencies in terms of how information is presented through text. While the first game receives a huge “Match One” graphic which appears rather beautifully between different players, this graphic gimmick doesn’t survive into matchdays two or three. Sometimes scoreboards deliver information of a final score. Sometimes text alone does the same job. Sometimes, it’s a combination of the two. It may seem like a small point, but it detracts so much sheen from the final product. Depending on what kind of footage was actually available in editing, the filmmakers needed to make a call as to whether they could consistently deliver the information via scoreboards, and if not, then they should have dropped it. Similarly, if they were not going to commit to graphic trickery all the way through, they should not introduce it so early in the film.
At the same time, this is not an especially engaging experience if you don’t really like football. The best sports films are those which manage to communicate with an audience beyond their participants and fans. To enjoy Senna, you don’t need to know anything about Formula 1, because the film sets out the stakes for you; the risks, the rewards, and what they mean to the characters involved. Similarly, Next Goal Wins remains a joy of a documentary, because even if you hate football, the human stories tied up in a team which famously lost 34-0 looking for redemption are captivating.
There are no central figures to carry us through this, though. Denver North’s coach is at pains to ensure his players regard themselves as part of a team, first and foremost, rather than just a collection of individuals. Somewhere along the way, it seems this film got lost in that rather moot point – and while occasionally someone directly addressed the camera in an interview segment, we don’t ever hear from them again. We don’t get to see how they feel about a victory or defeat, what they learned along the way, how the experience has changed them – or how their talents have helped to build a stronger team. To put it in the words of Parquet Courts’ brilliant political-sporting missive Total Football, “collectivism and autonomy are not mutually exclusive.” Failing to acknowledge that not only alienates the viewer, leaving them with nothing and nobody to cling onto to understand this world through; it kind of undermines the beauty of team sport as a whole.
This also means that whenever an opportunity presents itself for Gorski and the filmmakers to examine football as a social and political phenomenon, the chance goes begging. With no personal stories to give us inroads into those issues, the way is shut. The bus has been parked.
One example comes up when the caretaker of the school’s alumni network walks us through the team’s past. Women’s football is apparently very important to Denver North. It has a history dating back almost 100 years. With the US being one of the countries not to have banned the sport for women, that is a consistent century of organised sport. But despite this legacy, the Vikings play all their matches on an offensive rectangle of artificial turf, marked out exclusively for American Football – the kind played mostly with your hands – suggesting that what we are seeing isn’t really a priority for the school. How do the coach and players feel about that? Are they even free to comment?
At the same time, the film occurs at a time when US soccer is in a moment of transition. The increasingly controversial pay-to-play model initially equipped women’s football in the States for success, supplying it with more resources than the game in many other countries. That refers to the often-exorbitant fees which parents and carers of young people participating in organised youth sports face. In football, youth clubs can typically cost families thousands of dollars annually, including coaching costs, administration fees and travel expenses.
While that means the US initially had unmatched funds to dominate the women’s game, as time has passed, and the nations which have traditionally valued the game for men have gradually also endorsed the women’s game, that gap has closed. The effects of this are finally being seen at the highest level. 2023 was the first World Cup final not to feature the USWNT in over a decade. Thanks in part to the developmental efforts of FC Barcelona Femení (and finally recovering from Franco’s fascist government having banned it until the early 1970s) Spain is the incumbent world champion, and the Americans suddenly look like they have a lot of catching up to do. Looking at the continued mis-adventures of the USMNT, and the stagnation of the USWNT, pay-to-play is coming under scrutiny, for limiting the opportunities of poor and working-class people who want to get into soccer – and decreasing the national talent pool in the process.
Again, it would have been interesting to gain insight into the lives of the players from this angle. Does Denver North operate a pay-to-play model? Does it have a programme to help less-wealthy students participate? Or are they all from well-off backgrounds? Are there lower-middle class members, whose parents are struggling to keep up with the fees? How does that make them feel about their apparent need for unquestioning loyalty to a team that might be remorselessly milking their loved ones for profit? None of that has much impact on the film’s seeming primary function; to give the Vikings something to be proud of after the final whistle. But for all other intents and purposes, Gorski has missed an open goal.
This review will probably read incredibly harsh. We Are Denver North is a very likeable project, which offers up the chance for young football players to revel in their best moments on the pitch. Even if we know nothing more than that, that is something to root for. But there is so much brilliant material to work with, and in many cases, it seems to have not been handled with due care. On top of that, this film has potential to be more than a feel-good montage – it could tell us human stories, and use them to address some huge issues facing sport and society.
On the upside, it seems that this is Gorski’s first attempt at a film of this kind. Every one of the things I have snarked at here is a lesson learned – and hopefully, he will also be working with larger budgets in his illustrious future, opening up opportunities to expand both his production remit, and also the themes touched upon by his films. This isn’t a grim defeat, then, as much as a misfiring first-half; and one I expect him to bounce back from when play resumes. Keep the faith.