By For a moment there, it didn’t look like Liverpool Football Club were going to get the chance to clinch their first Premier League title and first top-flight league trophy in 30 years. In this year of uncertainty, LFC’s almost certain victory looked to be threatened and ruled null and void. But once football managed to resume safely, Jurgen Klopp and his band of merry reds managed to do what everyone expected them to do; they lifted the Premier League trophy. Since then, there have been many docs and TV specials put together to capture the moment and chart both the bizarreness of the 2019/2020 season and the long 30 years it took to finally get the silverware the club so desperately coveted.
Trying to stand out from the pack of these numerous docs and TV specials is James Erskine’s The End of the Storm. Featuring exclusive interviews with some of the key players involved in the club’s success, and more access to the Melwood training ground, The End of the Storm has all the ingredients to be the definitive documentary for this key moment in Liverpool’s history. While the final result doesn’t quite contain as much access or behind the locker room footage that characterises something like Amazon’s ‘All or Nothing’ series, it is still absolute catnip for any fan of the Merseyside Reds.
I will come clean with you folks, I am myself a Liverpool Football Club fan. As a result, I’m certainly going to be more susceptible to the charms of the figures featured, the narrative being told and the praise being expressed throughout this documentary, which is also very clearly made by fans. But I am also a film journalist, and I would like to think I can be impartial, even with something focusing on something near and dear.
So, that being said, as a documentary, The End of the Storm hits all the beats you’d expect it to. It looks back over the near misses of previous campaigns that saw Liverpool get close, only to see it slip through their fingers. But that build-up of frustration and stop and start development is not the focus of this doc. More, it is the individuals involved in the current moment that are more of interest, namely the effect that Jurgen Klopp had on the club and its players. It is also keen to highlight the community of fans across the world who, even when the year was at its darkest point, kept their faith in the team and the hard-working ethos that has existed at Anfield for generations.
Full review over at Filmhounds Magazine, originally published November 24th 2020.
Andrew Gaudion 