Invictus

Invictus is a spare and noble film about the importance of and difficulty in achieving a measure of acceptance and even solidarity among people of different cultural and racial backgrounds. Set in South Africa in 1995, not long after the election of Nelson Mandela to be the first black president of that country, Invictus depicts the sharp divisions between whites and blacks at that time. Even though you expect to see a strong sense of unity by the end of the film--and you know you won't be disappointed--what director Clint Eastwood and stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon manage to achieve is nonetheless admirable and even enjoyable to watch. You might even, as I did, find yourself interested in the outcome of a rugby match upon which, seemingly, the fate of South African hinges.

Yes, that's right, rugby--a sport with which I am completely unfamiliar--is the means by which Freeman's Mandela plans to unite the blacks and whites of his country. He notices not longer after taking office that the national team, the Springboks, is automatically granted one of the spots for the World Cup of 1995 because South Africa is the host country. He attends a match and notices that only the whites seem to support the team. Blacks tend to favor soccer, a point illustrated at the beginning of the film when you watch a soccer match played by poor blacks and a rugby match played by rich whites on opposite sides of the road down which the newly freed Mandela is traveling. It's a somewhat heavy-handed way of displaying the sharp divides in the country, but I suppose you need a context for the brief history lesson that also opens the film.

Mandela, trying his best to get his country past the desire on the part of blacks for retribution and the fear on the part of whites of that same retribution, reaches out to the captain of the Springboks, Damon's Francois Pienaar, an Afrikaner (white), to assist him. He doesn't say that, of course. He only hints or suggests it. And Francois is somewhat uncertain as to how to get his less-than-stellar team to engender much of a following in the black community. There's only one black member of the team, Chester, who is something of a national hero. Pienaar, at the urging of Mandela, takes the team to a series of rugby clinics in the poor black townships. We watch some bonding between the guys on the team and the young blacks who come out to play. The team also makes a visit to the prison where Mandela was held captive for more than twenty years, and it's there that Pienaar seems to have his most profound epiphany.

That sequence is also where the film takes its one flight from realistic depictions of these events. Wherever he turns at the prison, Pienaar seems to see a shadowy image of Mandela and what his days there must have been like, whether being confined to his tiny cell or breaking rocks in the yard alongside the other prisoners. It's a bit disconcerting to watch these moments, given how much attention has been given to recreating the time period in realistic terms. However, it doesn't detract from the overall film's success, and it does provide a means for understanding the change of heart that Pienaar seems to have had about the destiny of the team and his home country.

Freeman, as you might expect, is excellent as Mandela. Although many have criticized his accent here, I think he manages to capture both the speech patterns and the mannerisms of the former South African president, and he achieves a much more difficult act of representation: the smile for which Mandela is so well known. It's as if he shines from within when he smiles, making it all the more interesting when you know the mistreatment that he suffered at the hands of the previous white-controlled government. Freeman never loses sight of the actual man; he just allows us to see just how fervently committed to a peaceful unity Mandela was. I can't imagine anyone else in the role, and frankly, I can't imagine that anyone else could do as good of a job.

When casting the part of a rugby team captain, Damon might not be the first person who comes to mind, but he acquits himself nicely here. Gone is his familiar Boston accent, replaced by a carefully controlled Afrikaner one instead. And, despite his role as a rugby player, Damon has to bring a level of gravitas to many of the scenes he plays. When he tells his team during the World Cup final match against New Zealand, "This is it. This is our destiny," you have to believe those words. They could easily devolve into cliche, but thanks to Damon's consistency throughout the film, they ring true.

The title Invictus comes from a Victorian era poem by William Ernest Henley. It's a relatively brief poem, just four stanzas, and it's one that Mandela memorized during his time in prison. He recites some of the key lines at one point in the movie, and he writes out a copy to give to Pienaard. The poem is about overcoming one's negative circumstances, about finding a sense of hope in a time of darkness. The last couple of lines, "I am the master of my fate:/I am the captain of my soul," served as a source of inspiration to Mandela, and he hopes the same fate will happen to Damon's Pienaar. I'm glad to see a movie use a poem as such a key plot point. It isn't a particularly good poem, but it's sentiment is honestly expressed.

I might say the same about Invictus. I think it earns its emotional resonance honestly. Thanks, at least in part, to the unobtrusive directing style for which Eastwood has become known, we are allowed to witness the events of the narrative without being manipulated too often or too heavily. There are no directorial flourishes here, just good, somewhat old-fashioned storytelling that gets to the heart of the racial divide in South Africa. At times, some of the white characters act in ways that suggest that they are still fearful or resentful of a black-led government, and at times, some of the black characters behave as if they feel the whites should all be punished. It doesn't make them into stereotypes or caricatures, though, because they are almost always balanced by another character (and it's usually Freeman's Mandela) who tries to restore a sense of balance. It's a tricky achievement to depict that, but one that Invictus manages to reach.