Director: Clint Eastwood
Closing in on the first year of Obama’s presidency, several of this year’s late releases coincidentally reflect racial harmony and goodwill to our common man. “The Blind Side” exemplifies a charitable white Southern woman who takes in a homeless young black man, and “The Princess and the Frog” has given us our first African-American princess. The latter film is not overt in it’s preaching, but both the former and Clint Eastwood’s latest, “Invictus”, are more than guilty of it.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) came to presidency in South Africa after a 27-year prison term. Apartheid was over, but racial tension was certainly more than present. Mandela, desperate to unify the nation, got behind the South African rugby team, the Springboks, who had been criticized as a team symbolizing Afrikaner pride. Mandela chooses not to redub the team, however, but rather inspire the under-achieving team to World Cup success through a friendship with Springbok captain, François Pienaar (Matt Damon).
We’re told frequently throughout that the film is about inspiration and overcoming prejudice. I didn’t feel that Eastwood gave us quite enough of the tension of post-apartheid South Africa, however. The film’s masterfully done opening shot, contrasting rugby matches between wealthy Afrikaners in a well-kempt field and young black boys playing on a chained-off plot of dirt, reflects an anxiety that is largely neglected as the film begins to wear on. While Eastwood is not trying to make a film about apartheid, he glosses over the racial tension so much so that, by the end, it’s not precisely illustrated what Mandella is hoping to accomplish by winning the match.
My biggest problem is just that – there’s no risk to be had, things progress obviously towards the film’s schmaltzy conclusion. Everything Freeman and Damon do is overshadowed by the sheer overstatement of the rest. When Pienaar visits Mandella’s cell, Mandella appears in the vacant chair in spirit. Racial tension is reduced to a cute relationship between black and white security guards. As if your eyes hadn’t rolled enough, wait for the appalling use of the trite emo tune “Colorblind” by the South African band Overtone.
The film’s length becomes especially apparent in the film’s climactic game. Things devolve quickly into standard sports movie fare – the slow-motion and swelling score almost undermine everything that came before it. It’s too cute, too easy, a film that first revels in the quiet moments before reducing itself to the tired conventions of the long-since-dead genre of inspirational sports films.
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