Our belated “Invictus” review. We saw this before regular limited release, but in the end were so indifferent about the film it took a long time to finish it.
While manipulative and high on a sports feelgood sentiment, Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” is still an occasionally genuinely rousing piece of work despite some severely distracting flaws. But it’s also, in the end, rather unremarkable and unmemorable with low, long-tail resonance.
Neither a biopic of Nelson Mandela nor a rugby film — which is evident in the Anthony Peckham script — instead, the picture is a portrait of what it takes to inspire and unite the human spirit after years of deep-seated bitterness via apartheid.
In that conceit obviously lie cliches, formulaic sports-worn maneuvers, but also some genuinely earned moments of triumph.
The mannered picture begins with Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) in 1994, essentially one day after he is elected president of South Africa and just after a prologue on the state of the nation — apartheid ended approximately four years earlier, but resent, bitterness, and mistrust still rule the nation. The white minority — who still control most of the economy and power — are either fearful of black reprisal or disgusted that a “terrorist” has taken office. The black majority are vengeful and eager to effect sweeping change within the country that eradicates many symbols of White South African pride.
Mandela, imprisoned for decades on the Robben Island prison, is all too aware of the national schism and sensing the growing discord — crime and unemployment begin to rise and the economy teeters with uncertainty — his first step in “healing the nation” is to do everything in his power to soothe racial frictions. His first appeals are to his own black Africans asking them to rise up and turn the other cheek — invoking a Gandhi-like mantra of not making the same mistakes in retribution.
Realizing his all-black security team is the most visible of his staff, one of his first acts — much to the chagrin of his existing security team — is to hire white members of the Special Branch forces that, in some cases, tried to threaten their lives in the past. Mandela also appeals to everyone in the white house staff, and former employees under President de Klerk, that they should not fear for their jobs — each white employee, many of them already half-packed, are asked to stay on board. “Your country needs you,” is Mandela’s plea and thus begins a healing which Mandela dubs “the rainbow nation.”
While the presidential affairs keep him preoccupied, unity is constantly on his mind and the manner in which to bridge this divide. Evincing foresight that no one seems to understand at the time, Mandela makes a curious move when he intervenes within the affairs of the national rugby coalition who are aiming to not only change the name of the national Springbok team, but change their colors, as to blacks they are deep-rooted symbols of apartheid and oppression.
But keenly understanding that this move would only further divide the nation, Mandela decides to trump all decisions and keep the team and colors; essentially having a long-term plan to subvert and re-contextualize these symbols as emblems of unification and solidarity, but in these early days no one understands this plan. This is all of course the first act set-up and with his plan in place — fully aware that the ailing and underdog Springboks have been automatically entered into the World Cup because South Africa is the hosting nation — he seeks to bring the captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to his side in hopes of instilling some inspiration in his mediocre team.
And from there, “Invictus” becomes a fairly conventional and straight-forward sports drama. Mandela keeps impressing Pienaar with encouragement and illuminating words, the Captain slowly begins to understand what Mandela and blacks have gone through and begins to build a motivation and spark in his own team. The team is average, but gets better. The racial divide between the country — exemplified in Mandela’s own warring security teams — is noxious, but gradually relationships become better over time. The film inches forward with these two concepts — an improving nation, an improving sports team, empowered by the soulful words of Mandela — and there are really very few surprises. It’s not necessarily formulaic to the point of banality, but it’s simply too foreseeable and kind of dull.
If there is one major tonal fault to the picture it’s Eastwood’s inability to balance mood. The first half is classic Eastwood; unsentimental, subtle to the point of missing key script moments (unless you’ve read it which we did) and no-nonsense craftsmanship. But his simple, forthright tone is disrupted at the midway point when over-amplified music cues, instructional, please-feel-this close-ups and slow-motion saturation begin to take hold and overwhelm. It’s as if Eastwood decides to drop the subtle, mannered tenor half-way through in favor of manufactured arousal and emotional stirrings.
The accents are admittedly terrible and distracting. Matt Damon’s is off, but at least he keeps an unwavering commitment to it (and overall, it’s not that bad). Morgan Freeman on the other hand begins his sentences in the cadence of Nelson Mandela (a not great, but passable imitation), but then ends almost all of them sounding like himself. It’s terribly distracting and takes you out of the picture often. And inexplicably, when Freeman reads the all-important “Invictus’ poem that inspired the title of the film, he all but drops the accent in favor of his regular American voice. It’s a very strange move.
Though Eastwood handles the story with his characteristically economic and staid, journeyman-like hand there are again, problems in that second half. While the use of music is spare initially the second half has some dubious choices including a cornball-ish track called “Color Blind” that arrives in a key scene where Mandela visits the Springboks team unannounced in a helicopter (coming down from the heavens to imbue them with spiritual elevation). Lyrically and sonically on-the-nose, the melodramatic anthem is far too obvious, it’s a troublesome moment (that sort of nicely captures the problems that begin midway). While Damon is competent (and noticeably beefed up) in the role of the spiritually-moved rugby captain, Freeman doesn’t inhabit the role of Mandela the way one would hope. Perhaps its because Mandela is one of the most well-known figures in the world (and again, Freeman’s accent is very off), the suspension of disbelief is hard to achieve and the story is consequently that less engaging.
Eastwood’s spare tone goes awry again in another significant moment when Pienaar and his team visit the grim Robben Island prison where Mandela was incarcerated for almost three decades and misfires with the ill-conceived choice of superimposing “memory” moments of Mandela in his prison garb while Pienaar solemnly reflects out the prison bars presumably thinking, “boy, we were major assholes to these people, I feel mighty guilty, maybe I should win the World Cup as a form of forgiveness.”
Its too much (obviously), looks odd and again, as part of that second half, doesn’t feel in keeping with the rest of the film’s tenor, and you begin to care less and less.
Another small issue is the stadium moments where continuous shots of a 60,000 strong crowd are rendered in randomly programmed CGI moments that feel like you’re in the middle of a FIFA ’98 video game. While these complaints may sound like quibbles, it all adds up to a second half that dials up the energy and in some ways feels like its attempting to force-feed the audience the stirring feelings of inspiration.
“Invictus,” the title coming from a poem of resolve written by William Ernest Henley that Mandela read to himself in times of darkness, can be genuinely stirring, but in part from all the trappings that come with sports movies cliches about teams banding together to come from behind to defy the odds. Add a racial element to it — a team that “heals a nation” — and you’re treading on some dangerously thin and hokey, not to mention potentially insulting, ideological ice (it’s not like South Africa is magically ok now, the country is still deeply burdened to this day with a major racial discordance).
Mandela’s skeptical and opposing black and white security are at each others throats at the beginning of the picture and we’re not mildly surprised when the at-odds forces are practically best-friends-forever at the end of the picture. “Invictus” is not a bad picture, though it does feature some lulls, its just one that in a year of pretty memorable pictures (despite all the weak ones, many of them mainstream films) becomes rather forgettable a day after the crowd-capacity noise and sweet celebratory victory fumes have died away.
Morgan Freeman appears to be a lock for a Best Actor nomination for “Invictus” which is a shame because it will bounce his buddy Damon out of the running; his turn as the bi-polar, unreliable narrator in Soderbergh’s “The Informant” is infinitely more interesting and unique, but Freeman pretty much gets a pass for whatever he does, which is getting more than a little tired. Damon might be just average in “Invictus” (nominations should pass him by for it), but it’s sad to see a bolder turn in another film get overlooked for this unremarkable performance. And “Invictus” itself will probably be nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, but why? It’s such a mild effort overall. Something more deserving should certainly be there in its place. [B-]