INVICTUS: Sermon on the Pitch

Clint Eastwood has had a remarkable run of films of late. Starting with the great MYSTIC RIVER in 2003 and continuing at an impressive one-film-a-year clip with MILLION DOLLAR BABY, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, LETERS FROM IWO JIMA, CHANGELING, and GRAN TORINO, Eastwood has proven himself to be a surprisingly durable and resilient director. His recent movies may not all be masterpieces, but they do represent a consistently high level of quality work. So I suppose it may be just the law of averages coming to the fore with INVICTUS, clearly the weakest of the lot.

INVICTUS tells the story of how newly elected South African President Nelson Mandela used his country’s nearly all-white rugby team to help unify his divided state. This tale sets up two distinct tracks for the movie – the political and the sporting. And although he wrings excellent performances out of his two leading men – Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as the rugby captain Francois Pienaar – Eastwood botches both tracks.

The national rugby team, named the Springboks, had always been the pride and joy of the Afrikaaners and the scorn of black South Africans. Like most of the latter, Mandela grew up cheering for whomever the Springboks were playing against. When the blacks finally reached power, with the election of Mandela, the green-and-gold-clad rugby team was on the verge of being abolished. But then the new President stepped in and saved the team. Most black South Africans were outraged but Mandela astutely realized the power of sports to inspire and unify and so he persevered. In fact, he actively encouraged the team to strive to win the World Cup of rugby that year (1995.) The surprise success of the rejuvenated Springboks on the world stage garnered a lot of positive attention for both the newly refurbished country and its charismatic leader.

That sounds like a great idea for a movie, so what went wrong? For starters, it’s too damn reverential. Morgan Freeman is a great choice to play Mandela. He has the president’s halting eloquence down pat and shows enough charisma to convince us he could charm a nation. But the screenplay doesn’t give Freeman anything to work with beyond Mandela’s public persona. In fact, nearly every utterance he makes is a platitude.

“Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That’s what makes forgiveness so powerful.”

“How can I not change when circumstances change, if I expect others to do the same?”

“We must build our nation with all of our bricks, even if some are wrapped in green and gold.”

“We must all exceed our own expectations.”

He even talks this way to his own daughter. When she objects to his shaking hands with the captain of the rugby team because he looks just like the brutes who nearly destroyed their family while Nelson was in prison, Freeman/Mandela reprimands her: You think only of your selfish needs. You must think of the needs of our nation.

At one point, a secret service guard scolds another guard for asking Mandela a personal question. “He’s not a saint; he’s a man, with a man’s problems.” But we get almost none of that in INVICTUS. Instead, he’s every inch a saint, and a very public saint at that. Mandela in this movie is little more than a GREAT MAN WALKING and that robs him of his humanity. So does all of his pontificating.

But that’s nothing that a rousing inspirational sports story can’t fix, right? Matt Damon, like Morgan Freeman, has mastered the South African accent and is very convincing as an Afrikaner rugby player. But once again he’s hampered by the formality of the script. We never get a glimpse into what makes this son of a racist Afrikaaner tick. Instead he sits around stiffly discussing philosophies of leadership with the President. And at the end of the biggest match in the history of South Africa, when Mandela thanks him for what he has done for the country, Damon’s rugby player actually says, “No, Mr. President, thank YOU for what you have done for our country.” Sheesh.

But even all these script troubles might have been overcome by a few exciting rugby games. Sports in movies are nothing if not easy emotional grabbers. But Eastwood can’t even get that right. Admittedly, rugby is a tougher emotional sell, since most of us don’t understand the rules of the game. But still, you’d think he could wrench out a few more thrills than he does with the three of four odd games he depicts in INVICTUS. (Rugby on screen looks about as compelling as Quidditch, and that’s not even a real game.)

It’s entirely possible that Eastwood intentionally downplays the excitement of the matches because he wants to make sure the sports component is kept subservient to the political. But if that’s the case, I think he miscalculated. Just as South Africa needed the emotional lift of a World Cup victory to help the country fulfill its destiny, so too does INVICTUS need the emotional lift those games could have provided to fulfill its promise.

The word “invictus” means “unconquered” but I’m afraid this time out the material defeated the director.