Eastwood's 'Invictus' scores on multiple levels
Clint Eastwood isn't exactly the kind of director you'd expect to make an ABC-TV After School Special.
But he made one anyway. It's a fairly good one, too.
It's called "Invictus," a restrained, feel-good historical drama merged with the conventions of a formula sports underdog story.
The former appeals to critics and awards; the latter appeals to popularity and box office.
Eastwood chases the best of both worlds in "Invictus," a well-crafted drama that practically fawns over Morgan Freeman's South African leader Nelson Mandela to the point of teary-eyed worship.
"Invictus" begins with Mandela being elected president of a once-white-ruled country that had left him to rot in prison for nearly three decades.
As he strolls through his new office, Mandela notices the white staffers from the previous regime have packed their belongings. To everyone's shock, he tells them that they can stay. Not only that, but that they are needed by their suffering country, provided they are willing to work for its benefit.
More shocked are Mandela's black security guards when the new president assigns a few tough-looking white guys to their team, mean-looking guys who undoubtedly abused if not tortured black prisoners under the previous Apartheid government.
Mandela calls it "reconciliation," and his openly Christ-like leadership tests the nature of all South Africans by calling for an end to hatred and the beginning of unity.
"The past is the past," Mandela says, and his forgiving approach to heal the country continues to confuse his followers and utterly confound his former enemies.
Then comes a pivotal moment in history, and in this movie.
Mandela moves to block the dismantling of the white Afrikaners' favorite sports team, the Springboks rugby players, a symbol of the oppressive, Apartheid government.
He understands that to heal South Africa, he must find a magic balance between unreasonable hopes from blacks, and reasonable fears from whites.
Mandela invites the Springboks' popular captain, Francois Pienaar, to tea, but it's really a motivational moment for Mandela to press for an impossible dream: He wants Pienaar and the Springboks to win the rugby World Cup.
Pienaar is played by a muscled-up Matt Damon with so much restraint and humility, he barely resembles his movie star persona.
Armed with a seemingly impeccable South African accent, Damon depicts Pienaar as a true sports figure uninterested in, and unmotivated by, petty politics.
The rest of "Invictus" follows the familiar game plan of a sports movie where the underdog Springboks work their way up the brackets until they take on the New Zealand All-Blacks (mostly All-Whites in black uniforms) at the Big Dance.
Eastwood spends an inordinate amount of time on the game (just under 20 minutes), and he can't resist the temptation to frame the action in slow-motion, an aesthetic decision that pushes an anticlimactic scene even further into listless cliché.
Nonetheless, "Invictus" works as both a valuable history lesson and an entertaining sports film, capped by Freeman's humanizing performance of a bigger-than-life character already standing in the shadow of spotless sainthood.
The film's title comes from William Ernest Henley's classic 1875 poem famous for the lines "I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul."
Eastwood wisely refuses to smack us in the face with these inspirational words. He first teases us with Henley's poem, then hits us with the full effect at the moment of maximum impact.
Is this really an ABC-TV After School Special?
Yes. The best kind, too.
"Invictus"
Rating: ★ ★ ★
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Tony Kgoroge, Adjoa Andoh
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Other: A release. Rated PG-13 for language. 134 minutes