Matt Shea
RubySoho
Morgan Bell
Cibbuano
David O'Connell
Mountain Fog
Invictus
January 21st 2010 06:40
by Matt Shea
For the New Zealand readers of this site, let’s be clear: There is no character named ‘Suzie’ in Invictus and no scenes of elite New Zealand sportsmen puking their guts up on the sideline.
In fact, there aren’t any elite New Zealand sportsmen in Invicitus at all. Instead, it looks like All Black coaches dragged up the Poverty Bay Farmers’ Association Second 15 to take on the Springboks in the 1995 Rugby World Cup final. It’s the sorriest interpretation of a New Zealand sports team imaginable, and there’s not even The Rock onboard to play Jonah Lomu, People’s Elbow-ing his way to the try line.
This may all sound like nit-picking, but these deficiencies help make director Clint Eastwood’s latest an unconvincing sports film. It wouldn’t matter if the sport took second place to the politics, but that’s not necessarily the case – the final stacks-on between the Springboks and the All Blacks lasts for 18 long minutes of screen time, an eternity when the result is already written in the annals of history.
Unfortunately, when it is off the field, Invictus isn’t a great feature about Nelson Mandela or early post-apartheid South African politics either, being short on context and big on broad brush strokes.
Developed from John Carlin’s book, The Human Factor: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed the World, Invictus explores how political prisoner-turned-president Mandela harnessed the Springboks and the 1995 Rugby World Cup – which was hosted in South Africa – as a means of bringing blacks and whites together after decades of mistrust, thus securing the future of his country.
It may sound like a fanciful idea, but Mandela’s scheme was actually a carefully calculated risk that had a real possibility of backfiring. The Springboks had forever been a symbol of white supremacy in a black-dominated nation. Rather than doing what seemed politically logical – indeed, what many people were calling for – and pulling the team apart to be rebranded in the spirit of the rainbow nation, Mandela chose instead to get behind the Springboks in an attempt to capture the hearts and minds of a white population that was threatening to separate from the rest of South Africa.
Invictus is very good at laying out these stakes in its first act, the filmmakers working efficiently to introduce Mandela (Morgan Freeman), the Springboks, and the two sides of the population’s differing attitudes towards both. In a sharp piece of work from screenwriter Tony Peckham, the country’s racial tensions are neatly encapsulated by Mandela’s security detail, the new president’s chosen men having to work side by side with cynical white veterans from the apartheid era. Crammed together in a tiny office, the early animosity is palpable.
Morgan Freeman as Mandela is terrific in these early scenes. It’s worth a snigger when you see him inserted into the stock footage at the start of the film, but Freeman is a stone cold professional and after the first 15 minutes you’ll have difficulty separating him from the real man. Likewise, Matt Damon does an admirable job as Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar, who quickly becomes the central cog in Mandela’s plan to win the World Cup. Damon is not cut from granite like the real Pienaar but he still manages to sell the role early in the piece, even snapping off a few ‘howzit’s to help seal the deal.
Things start to slip a little in the middle section of the film, however, when Peckham and Eastwood fail to go into more depth regarding the political stakes of Mandela’s plan. The ANC and their anti-Springbok sentiments are laid out in just one scene, a complex organisation that worked for many years to free Mandela reduced to a simplistic depiction that has them as dogma-drinking ideologues.
It’s frustrating, because a deep and ingrained resistance to the Springboks existed at many levels of black society, but in Invictus Mandela leaps these obstacles as quickly and easily as one does a coiled garden hose. The result is a lack of jeopardy that damages proceedings, particularly when it comes to the many scenes of supposedly make-or-break rugby late in the film.
These same scenes of sporting glory are also let down by the bizarre decision to film them almost exclusively in extreme close-up. Rugby is a something best viewed from the middle distance, its sweeping, fast-running, hard-hitting nature then becoming much more apparent for strangers to the game. As it is, you get men grunting a lot as they bump into each other half-heartedly, like the studio didn’t want to incur any extra insurance costs.
And if you’re not a rugby follower and would like a quick run through of the game’s labyrinthine book of regulations, you’re going to be disappointed. At one point in the film the Springboks are sent on a PR exercise into the heart of the Johannesburg shantytowns, conducting coaching clinics for the soccer-mad children. A perfect opportunity to brush over the basic rules for the audience, but it never happens, most viewers left instead to piece together for themselves what’s going on during the apparently epic games of the World Cup finals.
So, the rugby scenes are too half-hearted (and sometimes inaccurate) for those who do follow the game, and make no sense for those who don’t. It’s disappointing, considering both Eastwood’s usual devotion to detail and the preponderance of celluloid devoted to the sport late in the film
Despite its clutch of deficiencies, Invictus is worthy when it comes to the smaller moments scattered throughout its running time: a young, black boy loitering near some white police officers to listen to the rugby on the radio, or the newly elected president’s embracing speech to his tentative white staff.
Clearly the film’s best scene is when the Springboks visit Robben Island Prison, Pienaar standing in the tiny cell that used to contain Mandela and casting his eye over the lime quarry where the president would do his hard labour. It’s perhaps not played as straight as it should be, but the visit still works as a powerful emotional centrepiece.
It’s these moments that partly salvage Eastwood’s lop-sided film, helping give it some emotional impact when the script is so often working against it. And you can’t help but feel Invictus wouldn’t have worked without Morgan Freeman in the central role of Mandela (incidentally, he’s also listed as an executive producer). He sells the president perfectly and provides a rock solid core to a film with more than its fair share of mouldy edges.
I never thought I’d write this, but Invictus would have worked much better if it had less rugby and more politics. As it is, this is a handsome film caught in no-mans land, ultimately lacking the emotional pay-off to make it anything more than a middling experience.
I say: A film that’s easy to admire, but not necessarily easy to enjoy. Best appreciated for its well crafted smaller moments rather than the malformed whole.
See it for: Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Invcitus would only be half as interesting without him.
*This image is from Time Out Chicago
For the New Zealand readers of this site, let’s be clear: There is no character named ‘Suzie’ in Invictus and no scenes of elite New Zealand sportsmen puking their guts up on the sideline.
In fact, there aren’t any elite New Zealand sportsmen in Invicitus at all. Instead, it looks like All Black coaches dragged up the Poverty Bay Farmers’ Association Second 15 to take on the Springboks in the 1995 Rugby World Cup final. It’s the sorriest interpretation of a New Zealand sports team imaginable, and there’s not even The Rock onboard to play Jonah Lomu, People’s Elbow-ing his way to the try line.
This may all sound like nit-picking, but these deficiencies help make director Clint Eastwood’s latest an unconvincing sports film. It wouldn’t matter if the sport took second place to the politics, but that’s not necessarily the case – the final stacks-on between the Springboks and the All Blacks lasts for 18 long minutes of screen time, an eternity when the result is already written in the annals of history.
Unfortunately, when it is off the field, Invictus isn’t a great feature about Nelson Mandela or early post-apartheid South African politics either, being short on context and big on broad brush strokes.
Developed from John Carlin’s book, The Human Factor: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed the World, Invictus explores how political prisoner-turned-president Mandela harnessed the Springboks and the 1995 Rugby World Cup – which was hosted in South Africa – as a means of bringing blacks and whites together after decades of mistrust, thus securing the future of his country.
It may sound like a fanciful idea, but Mandela’s scheme was actually a carefully calculated risk that had a real possibility of backfiring. The Springboks had forever been a symbol of white supremacy in a black-dominated nation. Rather than doing what seemed politically logical – indeed, what many people were calling for – and pulling the team apart to be rebranded in the spirit of the rainbow nation, Mandela chose instead to get behind the Springboks in an attempt to capture the hearts and minds of a white population that was threatening to separate from the rest of South Africa.
Invictus is very good at laying out these stakes in its first act, the filmmakers working efficiently to introduce Mandela (Morgan Freeman), the Springboks, and the two sides of the population’s differing attitudes towards both. In a sharp piece of work from screenwriter Tony Peckham, the country’s racial tensions are neatly encapsulated by Mandela’s security detail, the new president’s chosen men having to work side by side with cynical white veterans from the apartheid era. Crammed together in a tiny office, the early animosity is palpable.
Morgan Freeman as Mandela is terrific in these early scenes. It’s worth a snigger when you see him inserted into the stock footage at the start of the film, but Freeman is a stone cold professional and after the first 15 minutes you’ll have difficulty separating him from the real man. Likewise, Matt Damon does an admirable job as Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar, who quickly becomes the central cog in Mandela’s plan to win the World Cup. Damon is not cut from granite like the real Pienaar but he still manages to sell the role early in the piece, even snapping off a few ‘howzit’s to help seal the deal.
Things start to slip a little in the middle section of the film, however, when Peckham and Eastwood fail to go into more depth regarding the political stakes of Mandela’s plan. The ANC and their anti-Springbok sentiments are laid out in just one scene, a complex organisation that worked for many years to free Mandela reduced to a simplistic depiction that has them as dogma-drinking ideologues.
It’s frustrating, because a deep and ingrained resistance to the Springboks existed at many levels of black society, but in Invictus Mandela leaps these obstacles as quickly and easily as one does a coiled garden hose. The result is a lack of jeopardy that damages proceedings, particularly when it comes to the many scenes of supposedly make-or-break rugby late in the film.
These same scenes of sporting glory are also let down by the bizarre decision to film them almost exclusively in extreme close-up. Rugby is a something best viewed from the middle distance, its sweeping, fast-running, hard-hitting nature then becoming much more apparent for strangers to the game. As it is, you get men grunting a lot as they bump into each other half-heartedly, like the studio didn’t want to incur any extra insurance costs.
And if you’re not a rugby follower and would like a quick run through of the game’s labyrinthine book of regulations, you’re going to be disappointed. At one point in the film the Springboks are sent on a PR exercise into the heart of the Johannesburg shantytowns, conducting coaching clinics for the soccer-mad children. A perfect opportunity to brush over the basic rules for the audience, but it never happens, most viewers left instead to piece together for themselves what’s going on during the apparently epic games of the World Cup finals.
So, the rugby scenes are too half-hearted (and sometimes inaccurate) for those who do follow the game, and make no sense for those who don’t. It’s disappointing, considering both Eastwood’s usual devotion to detail and the preponderance of celluloid devoted to the sport late in the film
Despite its clutch of deficiencies, Invictus is worthy when it comes to the smaller moments scattered throughout its running time: a young, black boy loitering near some white police officers to listen to the rugby on the radio, or the newly elected president’s embracing speech to his tentative white staff.
Clearly the film’s best scene is when the Springboks visit Robben Island Prison, Pienaar standing in the tiny cell that used to contain Mandela and casting his eye over the lime quarry where the president would do his hard labour. It’s perhaps not played as straight as it should be, but the visit still works as a powerful emotional centrepiece.
It’s these moments that partly salvage Eastwood’s lop-sided film, helping give it some emotional impact when the script is so often working against it. And you can’t help but feel Invictus wouldn’t have worked without Morgan Freeman in the central role of Mandela (incidentally, he’s also listed as an executive producer). He sells the president perfectly and provides a rock solid core to a film with more than its fair share of mouldy edges.
I never thought I’d write this, but Invictus would have worked much better if it had less rugby and more politics. As it is, this is a handsome film caught in no-mans land, ultimately lacking the emotional pay-off to make it anything more than a middling experience.
I say: A film that’s easy to admire, but not necessarily easy to enjoy. Best appreciated for its well crafted smaller moments rather than the malformed whole.
See it for: Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Invcitus would only be half as interesting without him.
*This image is from Time Out Chicago
| 81 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
'Worthy' would be a great way to explain this - towards the end it just lacks any sort of emotional climax, meaning it's pretty forgettable. Having said all that, I was watching when the real thing unfolded so maybe I'm just a bit too close to the facts of the story.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I'm a big Eastwood fan (who isn't/) but i must say that this one does nothing for me. I have no desire to see it and after reading your review it sounds like I won't be missing much.
Sports films seldom attract me and the idea of another "safe' exploration of the South African segregation just bores me.
Comment by Luke
Old Movies
Cane Toad Warrior
Freeman is very good in it, better than he has any right to be when you consider how often he just taps it in with his Morgan Freeman routine. He really puts the effort in to not be just Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela.
It's quite an intelligent film, I enjoyed it a lot more than Changeling or Flags of Our Fathers.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Yeah, the rugby scenes are a bit av, and there's just too much screen time dedicated to it for me to overlook the poor quality. It's strange too, because other parts of the film (the crowds for example: the smattering of apartheid era flags and pockets of black South Africans supporting the All Blacks) really show his typical attention to detail.
You're absolutely right - Freeman is the main reason to see this. As Dave mentioned, I've become a bit ho-hum regarding his output in recent years, but he really nails it in this.
It just didn't have enough depth on the political side of things for me. Having said that, it had some really nice moments and only a couple of howlers, and I agree that it's better than both Changeling and Flags.
Comment by Mr Nice Guy
Pop Culturist
Pop Rock Factory
Cheers
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by Steam Train
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Freeman nominated for Best Actor and Damon for Supporting Actor, though.
Comment by