Invictus

Invictus

133 Minutes

There is a misperception that Clint Eastwood has been on a directorial streak as of late. The truth of the matter is that he hit a slump in 2008. It started with the muddled and overblown Changeling; a film that while it featured an intensely emotional performance from Angelina Jolie and an oppressively bleak tone, felt oddly flat and impassive. And although Gran Torino was a definite fan-favorite, it was another step backwards, undoing all the work that Unforgiven had done to rebuke Eastwood’s action-hero image. The performances of the Hmong kids in particular were embarrassingly amateurish. Unfortunately, Eastwood’s slump continues with Invictus. Based on the book, Playing the Enemy, by John Carlin, Invictus has all the earmarks of a classic crowd pleaser. It’s a no-brainer. Disappointingly, so is the filmmaking.

Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) has just been elected president of South Africa. His first order of business is to repair the huge rift between the newly empowered black majority and the now deposed white minority. The National Sports Council has voted to dismantle the national rugby team, the Springboks, and to do away with their much hated green and gold colors once and for all. But in a surprising move, Mandela rescues the team and bucks popular opinion. He recognizes that while blacks view the Springboks as a symbol of apartheid, they are still an important source of pride for whites. To the dismay of his staff, he champions the team, making them the core of his “Rainbow Nation” movement. As host of the upcoming World Cup, South Africa has the world’s stage, and Mandela realizes that the Springboks must play the central role in healing a damaged country. Mandela recruits the team’s Afrikaner leader Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) for his cause, inspiring Pienaar to turn around the team’s losing ways.

If there is anyone who was born to play Nelson Mandela, it’s Morgan Freeman. The man has the market cornered on dignified wisdom, usually cast in films as the narrator, an authority figure or even God. As Mandela, Freeman manages to channel his folksy and fatherly charm through a thick South African accent. His Mandela is a prophet who sees things we mere mortals can’t. Just as this man has greatness written all over him, so does this role. Unfortunately, Freeman’s role of a lifetime is woefully underwritten. He is just too saintly; so much so that there is a scene where one of his bodyguards has to literally remind us that he’s human. Mandela’s service to his people has come at a cost to his family. They hate him, but we never have a clue as to why, so superficial is their treatment. We never even see his wife Winnie, just his angry daughter.

Matt Damon packs on the muscle for the role of Pienaar. He’s completely believable as a rugby player. He has to be since most of his scenes are on the field or the gym or the locker room. Pienaar is pretty much a cipher. We never know what his political or moral beliefs, thus weakening his eventual transformational arc. When his moments of inspiration come – mostly in the form of a Victorian poem “Invictus” which kept Mandela going through his 27 year imprisonment – they fall flat. It doesn’t help matters that the relationship between Mandela and Pienaar is purely ceremonial, consisting of only a few official meetings.

It’s also unclear how Pienaar’s moments of inspiration translate on the field. We rarely see him lead. Most of the rugby scenes are shot in montage and are confusing. It’s doubly confusing in America where rugby is an obscure sport. If you want to learn more about rugby, look elsewhere. There is no sense of strategy, technique, or gamesmanship until the final scene. And that scene is so clichéd, sappy, and redundant that it overrides everything (There should be a referendum against slow-motion shots of game winning plays).

However, the film isn’t really about the characters or the sport of rugby. On one level, Invictus is about the state of a nation and an event that pushed it forward to another stage. The film is at its strongest when it’s setting up the stakes of the World Cup. It’s fascinating to see Mandela’s political maneuvering and how something as seemingly trivial as a losing rugby team can be instrumental to a torn nation’s reconciliation. At the time of this writing, much is being made of South Africa being the host nation to the FIFA World Cup in 2010, so it’s definitely timely. And America can surely relate to a newly elected president trying to change a country.

More than anything, the film is about healing and resilience. Unfortunately, a film cannot rise above mediocrity on the strength of theme alone. It needs execution. And it’s here that Eastwood drops the ball. His direction is predictable, obvious and contrived. As artists age, they become in danger of self-parody. Eastwood is in no danger here, because it doesn’t feel as if he directed the film at all.