Invictus

Invictus is the story of Nelson Mandela's post-Apartheid South Africa, and his attempt to unify the country using rugby as his tool of choice. Mandela (perfectly realized by Morgan Freeman), ascends to power in South Africa's first-ever democratic election, prompting the country's white Afrikaaner population to fear their fates. Mandela astonishes his people by announcing that he wants blacks and whites to work together for the good of the nation. His first move is to override a vote to do away with South Africa's rugby team, the Springboks. Mandela thinks the team can galvanize the relationship between black and white South Africans, allowing them to come together and root for a common goal. Matt Damon plays the Springboks captain, Francois Pienaar. Sporting a prosthetic nose and physique that has deftly shed its Informant! lbs., Damon's Pienaar is spot-on. Good Christ, he is talented. Damon's Afrikaaner accent is excellent, as is the physicality he employs to become a larger-than-life sports icon.
Sadly, Freeman and Damon are the only bright lights in this cloying bit of treacle. The film was directed by Clint Eastwood, a skilled monolith at times (Million Dollar Baby), and a laboriously heavy-handed helmer at others (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). The pacing is choppy and off-putting, which makes for a very disappointing muddle of a movie. At one point, the music oozes more cheese than an Ed Hardy t-shirt on an overweight reality dad. However, though some have denounced the story of Invictus as a mere historical footnote, I feel that attention must be paid to it. Clint Eastwood doubtless saw the parallels between Mandela, a highly educated African leader and our own highly educated African-American one. If only Barack Obama could use, say, the Chicago Cubs to solve our country's mounting shit storm of problems. But I digress. My Comment this week focuses on the very magnanimous posture that Mandela took as he lead South Africa into the future. When apartheid ceased to be, many of the country's black population wanted the Afrikaaners to pay dearly for their years of oppression. There was a palpable anger and universal feeling that Lex Talionis, or the Law of Retribution, should be visited upon the Afrikaaners. Nelson Mandela knew that this would only perpetuate the violence and segregation that had been the legacy of this most beautiful country. Mandela asked the black South Africans to rise above their anger and work with the Afrikaaners. He knew that the country could not succeed without the white infrastructure that had been in place for over a century. Mandela's pragmatism came wrapped in one of the more zen packages ever delivered by a modern leader.
By asking his people to forgo their thirst for revenge, Mandela elevated the psyche of his people. Why does it feel like Americans are miles to go before they sleep from that possibility? We want to hit Al Qaeda with the force of a thousand Oppenheimer specials, but then what? How can one punish an enemy if the ultimate punishment (death) doesn't frighten said enemy? Our hands are tied, and Americans do not like their hands tied. How Mandela got to a place of forgiveness after decades in prison, I'll never know. Moreover, how he had the brass ones to ask his countrymen to forgive their oppressors for the good of the country completely astounds me. Can you fathom our president asking us to do the same? I must stress that Mandela was not a perfect leader, particularly concerning his very black and white (forgive the pun) stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Maybe Mandela's brilliance lays in the decision to imbue such a seemingly innocuous pastime such as rugby with so vital a meaning. Although I doubt that in a country as large as ours you'd ever even get us to agree on one sport, let alone one political philosophy. It is a shame that Eastwood didn't give us a better lens with which to view this fascinating orchestration of leadership.