Invictus charts South Africa's 1995 Rugby World Cup campaign, when Nelson Mandela as the new President, foresaw a SA rugby victory over New Zealand's formidable All BLacks as a means of uniting dysfunctional white and black South Africans. Clint Eastwood directs.
Morgan Freeman successfully inhabits the Mandela persona, occasionally struggling with the accent. Matt Damon (looking pretty fit despite his age) plays François Pienaar the SA Springbok captain.
I understand that this movie didn't do all that well in the USA because it features the weird game of rugby - which is a pity, as it is a movie about reconciliation and forgiveness as much as anything else.
For me, it competently covered the facts - but in a fairly plodding and unengaging manner. Freeman and Damon did a good workmanlike job, but the end result failed to fire emotionally. And - hey, that Haka by the 'All Blacks' was a travesty!
“…it is a movie about reconciliation and forgiveness as much as anything else.” This is perfect and so true. On the outside, it’s a biopic and a sports movie. But the heart of the story is in the struggle to bring a country together after having been racially divided for many years. From a big scale change in the sporting events to smaller moments -- like the white policemen lifting the black child onto their shoulders after the Springboks win -- the movie is able to portray what it was (rather slowly) building up to in the end. A sporting win bringing all of South Africa together is a fairytale ending except that it happened, which is heartwarming and a lesson to us all.
ReplyDelete-- Wally Howe