Invictus
Clint Eastwood | USA | 2009
133 min
Invictus is a triumphant fusion of sports film and historical drama. Like the latter it serves as a placeholder of a period, recreating an era from the recent past but also retaining all of the genre conventions viewers have come to expect from the former. The film isn’t particularly well balanced, nor is it anything but simplistic in its outcome, but none of this prevents it from being both rousing as a sports film and stirring as a drama.
The year is 1995 and South Africa’s newly emancipated president, Mandela (Morgan Freeman, graceful and understated) is faced with the daunting task of uniting a country divided for generations by ethnicity and colour. There is friction between blacks and whites captured well in a scene where two sets of security teams from both races, hand picked by the President himself, have to work together in ensuring the safety of their elected representative. Historically, the film tells us, the Springboks were seen in the country as a team of white players in a sport favoured, played and seen by white men. These early scenes showcase the trajectory of the film – that Mandela was a shrewd politician who understood the power of sports and the influence of athletes (or any celebrities with large followings) as not just agents of change but as facilitators for acceptance of such change.
Due to the political aura of the sports event in the film, the stakes are much higher. In most films, a team is cheered for because the people in that team are representing the aspirations (to win the match, to defeat their opponent etc) of the people cheering them. In Invictus, this vibrancy is given a more significant edge – the team needs to win because the country stands a chance at unanimity. Eastwood’s leading men serve the script well, with Matt Damon suitably buffed to play charismatic captain Francois Pienaar and Freeman deserving of his Academy Award nomination in a role that is less imitation and more an emulation of the grace of a figure as recognizable as Mandela.
On the playing field, sports have often been used as a substitute for the battle cries of war and inciting national pride. In fact for many, sporting teams are pacifist armies and sporting events a form of peaceful battle, where rivalries are fought out. Eastwood’s film embraces this point of view by showing us that Mandela knew that a victory in the Rugby World cup would go a long way in possibly uniting, albeit briefly, the diverse people of his country, if not entirely improving the status quo. The film ends, as all sports movies do, with a glorious victory match and its brief, joyous celebratory aftermath (these are foregone conclusions and historic facts) and this has made some question the unsophisticated intentions of the director. This last act, suffers by giving us nearly thirty minutes of sports fuelled action, hinting at the limited capabilities of Eastwood in directing quick cut field play, but I’m willing to cut him some slack given his endurance at this age.
