Invictus
With a brief background on Nelson Mandela morphing from political prisoner/terrorist to president of a new South Africa, Invictus then leaps into the real focus of the story: Mandela’s drive to unify his countrymen through the national rugby team (long associated with apartheid) and their push for the World Cup. It’s an inspirational story, a politically genius move, and a different look at the other side of the world. Mandela’s amazing rise to power from a wee 10 foot square cell to chief executive would have been a better use of Morgan Freeman’s perfection in the role. The film seems to imply that the only thing that managed to reconcile a nation with eleven official languages and an acrimonious racial history is sport.
The spoils of colonialism render Johannesburg almost unrecognizable as being in “Africa,” the one we see in movies (which I know is also not the real Africa). Director Clint Eastwood surprisingly chose to narrow his attention to the Springboks team and the generalized paying audience’s attitude toward the players. Knowing just enough to be tantalized about Xhosa and Bantu and Indian and Khoisan and Boer swirling about in one country, I was hoping to have a window into that world so far away; I was disappointed to instead end up watching a whole lot of rugby (and yet I didn’t learn much about the sport either). Matt Damon did a great job as the captain of the Springboks, juggling a rugby physique and Afrikaans accent with the determination and gravity required by his character, Francois Pienaar.
As we near the climax, we begin having numerous false climaxes through egregious use of too much tension and much too much slow motion. The film at large suffers from pacing problems, perhaps deciding midstream what it wanted to be about. Based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy, the script by Tony Peckham felt as if he wanted to broaden the paintstrokes, but either faltered in his resolve or was directed not to.
Americans are used to seeing our particular brand of white versus black racism and relations play out on screen – for better or for worse, we at least know the dynamic. It is both illuminating and horrifying to see the differences from us in South Africa. These tantalizing scenes made me even more frustrated with the lengthy rugby sequences. They may have inspired the incredible cultural shift that Mandela was betting they would further, but the game was in the way of the real magic that I wanted to see.
During the overlong final game, a series of locations showing people of every stripe watching or listening to the game is inspiring and illustrative, but so very brief and a tad predictable. We have seen many montages of different people gathered around a television waiting for something momentous to happen; when something doubly momentous is happening, we expect something more. I felt Mandela wasn’t getting filmic credit for his big-picture thinking when he was being portrayed as a smiling rugby fan first – even the characters around him were repeatedly questioning his priorities, forcing us to agree with them. It’s a good and interesting story, but this film is not doing it justice.
MPAA PG-13
Release date 12/11/09
Time in minutes 134
Director Clint Eastwood
Studio Warner Brothers
