Invictus

Invictus

Dir: Clint Eastwood

If Morgan Freeman gets an Oscar nomination for his stilted exercise in hagiography as Nelson Mandela, it will be a crime. He sleepwalks through this movie (which he also co-produced), delivering wise maxims rather than authentic dialogue (the screenwriter shares the blame for this). Sadly, the entire movie is as lifeless as Freeman's performance: Matt Damon does his best in a decidedly supporting role as the South African rugby team captain, but he doesn't deserve a nomination, either.

Director Eastwood is too reverent of his subject to delve into the messy reality of the first years of Mandela's presidency, so he takes the easy way out by: 1) not bothering to cast, or even refer to, the radical members of the ANC or even Mandela's troublesome wife, Winnie; and 2) depicting everyone else as so damn noble! In place of a complex depiction of race relations, we have to suffer through a microcosm of distrust and reconciliation inside the cramped office of the Black and Afrikkaaner security detail assigned to guard the President (again, not convincing), and a throw-away scene of Damon's family's long-suffering (we assume she's long-suffering, because she's not given much to say) black housekeeper, who gets a ticket to the Final, so she can enjoy the game right next to her white employers!

Where Eastwood fails most miserably is in the climactic final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup (which naturally involves South Africa's "Springboks" versus those crazy New Zealand "All-Blacks"). He obviously doesn't know much about the sport, and has no interest in edifying his audience in even the basic rules. So we are left clueless as the game action plays out -- as clueless as the extras employed to play the crowd. Compare this with the best of the three sports movies released this year (I'm referring to the British import "The Damned United"): in that movie the scenes on the British soccer pitch are as authentic as the crowd's reaction to them.

Here, Eastwood gives us endless reaction shots of 'ordinary' South Africans glued to their TVs: but this crowd of extras (black and white, natch) might as well be watching election results for all the intensity they show. Their emotions run the gamut from A to B: from uninvolved silence to wild cheering (when Eastwood gives the cinematic cues to cheer--not a second before!). It would have been so easy to overlay the action with commentary from unseen announcers, to at least give us some sense of why the referee kept pointing to the ground and stopping play. But that would have interfered with the overbearing, uplifting score -- composed by, who else?, one of Clint's kids! (another Eastwood son plays one of the Springboks --quite well, because at least the rugby players all look like athletes). The simplicity that runs throughout the rest of the movie doesn't do us (the audience), South Africa (the nation), or most-importantly the sport of rugby any service.