Invictus: The best rugby movie out during the Christmas season

Editor’s note: Peter Lewis has agreed to use whatever it is you call his writing style to provide some measure of analysis to those folks who still go to a theater to see a movie. Enjoy.

review by Peter Lewis

While tuning in to a well listened to national radio show, I heard Matt Damon assure the inimitable Dan Patrick that “Invictus” would indeed be the best rugby movie out during the holiday season. Though I’m not really certain what, if anything, it is up against, but after seeing it, I can’t really argue with Matt. “Invictus” is a fine film with an uplifting message.

“Invictus” is directed by Clint Eastwood. In the words of a gregarious and slightly uncouth former employer, “that Clint Eastwood can’t make a bad movie.” While anyone who spent money on Space Cowboys might disagree, when it comes to direction (especially in the last six years), the man has a point. Clint certainly knows how to pick compelling material.

Half biopic and half feel good sports story, “Invictus” walks a perilous line between these two identities. On one hand, you have the story of Nelson Mandela. After being incarcerated for nearly 30 years, Mandela was released and in 1994 won the presidency of South Africa. The movie captures his first year in office as he tries to steady a tumultuous nation trying to find its way in a post-apartheid era. Skillfully, he was able to navigate the slippery path of reconciliation. And it was Mandela’s efforts towards this goal of unity that spawns the other side of the film, the quest of an underdog.

(For those that are unaware, invictus is Latin for “unconquered” and is also the title of a short poem by William Ernest Henley. Mandela had the poem written on a scrap of paper that he kept with him while in jail. Given the indomitable spirit of the poem, the reasoning behind this should be obvious.)

Many of those who will see “Invictus” (myself included) were much too young and/or oblivious to the events of the world to remember much about apartheid. As such, the preceding information is quite vital to understanding not only the plot, but the parallels within the story. For the symmetry between the life of Mandela and the South African rugby team seems almost too good to be true.

Unfortunately, the scope of events, at times, seems too much for Eastwood. For those familiar with Mandela the weight of his words and actions should be obvious and retain a forceful moral imperative that his easy going demeanor belied. However, for those unfamiliar, these words and actions are without much frame of reference (save passing dialogue) until the last portions of the film when Francois Pienaar (Damon) takes his teammates on a field trip to Robben Island (the location of Mandela’s incarceration).

While the film stumbles slightly out of the gates, it hits its stride by the back half. It is no jibe at Morgan Freeman, but this coincides with the greater focus on the captain of the Springboks, Francois Pienaar. Though I’ve long thought of Matt Damon as one of the more intelligent and grounded men in Hollywood, I had always found his personification of characters as adequate to slightly above average depending on the role. In short, I never felt he added much to a role, he simply embodied it already. After seeing “Invictus,” my tune may change. He played the Afrikaneer captain without flaw, illustrating perfectly the determined tenacity of an athlete and, at least to these Arkansan ears, admirably handled the dialectical affectations of a South African.

Though Eastwood was a bit heavy handed on his choice of music, it is within this realm that the universality of the film really comes to fruition. As the film marches towards the dramatic climax, the power of sport is on full view. We see the lines of race fall by the wayside, we see common ground forged by the flight of a ball, we see, in short, a nation coalescing into one. Upon watching the final scenes of Invictus, I couldn’t help but recall the unrivaled words of renowned baseball writer Roger Angell:

“And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete — the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball — seems a small price to pay for such a gift.”

We see the dancing, the caring … it is stretched across the face of the nation as it watches the representatives of a new and struggling nation doggedly fight against an odious foe. For Nelson Mandela and his nation of 42 million, caring was the ultimate gift.  Bloodied, but unbowed he and the Springboks both fought, not in delirious despair, but as masters of their fate. And it is this transcendent message of unconquerable hope in the face of darkness that gloriously shines in Eastwood’s film.

• Invictus is playing at the Malco Cinema 12 in Fort Smith. Link here for time and ticket info.

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