January 7, 2010: Invictus
If it’s December, then it’s time for another Clint Eastwood movie. Unless he’s releasing two movies in the year, in which case you get one in November as well. I like to rib Eastwood a bit for his deliberate awards bait, but the reality is he’s an Oscar darling and for a good reason. Even if only half of his recent films have been what I would describe as “good”, that’s still a far higher percentage than most directors achieve, and even his movies that aren’t good usually aren’t actually bad.
The other thing I like is that it’s usually pretty obvious from early reviews which type of Eastwood film we’re talking about, which makes it easy to adjust expectations to the right level. As a result, I found Invictus to be nearly tolerable even though the movie was really pretty dreadful. That’s not to say that this story isn’t without great merit, or that the actors or even the acting are horrible, quite the contrary, but very little of anything is handled properly.
This is the story of Nelson Mandela’s early days in power, following his 27-year imprisonment and his improbable election as President of South Africa in the mid-1990s as he tried to reunite a country which had been bitterly divided for decades due to its racist apartheid policies. The focus is on his unconventional approach to this nation-building, choosing to forgive rather than to avenge, which we see in all of his dealings both in public and in back rooms. He is established as a man of great integrity, who can see beyond simple short-term tactics and is committed to risking his reputation and political capital to work towards a more worthy and far-off goal. His plea to South Africa’s failing soccer team to turn themselves around and win the World Cup is a convenient symbolic journey to give the film more room to maneuver, and to give it a more exciting parallel narrative.
Morgan Freeman as Mandela, and Matt Damon as the soccer team’s captain, do good work here, illustrating the difficult and sometimes unpopular choices leaders need to make, and their South African accents and characters’ mannerisms are fine. I don’t fault them for this movie, and indeed the only two Oscar nominations this film received were for their acting.
Where I do have a problem is with the film seeming lifeless and by-the-numbers. Despite the humanity brought to the party by Freeman and Damon, there never seems to be any tension, despite heavy-handed efforts to generate it. Obviously there is racial tension everywhere you turn, but there are too many pat examples of the black/white conflict resulting in eventual camaraderie – Mandela’s security guards, Damon’s family and their housekeeper, the rugby team and its token black player. Whether you know how the soccer tournament turns out or not, it’s a jumbled mess and it’s not even clear which match is going on at any given time, much less whether or not South Africa is in real danger of losing.
In the modern Eastwood canon, I have to declare that this is a bit more Flags of our Fathers than Million Dollar Baby or Mystic River. Changeling is perhaps a good point of comparison – that is definitely the superior film, but the similarity is that it was competent and gripping in its way, yet also not really moving.
There are some good points, though. Mandela’s speeches, making his eloquent point that only forgiveness can reunite the country they all love, are pure cinema and yet probably also exactly what he said. Damon’s portrayal of a burdened and conflicted young man, leading by example rather than heroism, is something to behold. I recall the time of Mandela’s release from prison although I was fairly young, but the exact timeline of events and the soccer drama were pretty much unknown to me. As with many such films, I definitely learned something here, but not more than I could have gleaned from 15 minutes of reading about the events. This movie wasn’t really necessary, except as an acting showcase.
Another Eastwood dud leaves me disappointed.
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