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Invictus
Ben Kenigsberg reviews Clint Eastwood's Nelson Mandela drama Invictus.
A drama about Nelson Mandela’s real-life intervention in South African rugby sounds like a parody of Oscar bait, but leave it to Eastwood to shape it into a genuinely inspirational film about the power of symbols—at least until it turns into a standard sports movie in its second half. The first hour is an engrossing look at political strategy: The newly elected Mandela (Freeman) decides the way to unify the country is not to alienate Afrikaaners, and so he insists on preserving the status quo on the rugby team, a symbol of apartheid. He’s aided by the team’s captain (Damon), who has a racist family and couldn’t be bothered to vote in the 1994 elections. The presentation is tidy, but Freeman and Damon lend gravitas to even the hokiest lines.
There are elements of the sledgehammer approach that marred Million Dollar Baby —during the Big Game, Eastwood’s fixation on repeatedly showing one heavy being sacked borders on the laughable, and a sequence involving a low-flying plane is flat-out ludicrous. These may be the wages of turning out a solid feature every year. Invictus might seem out of keeping with Eastwood’s pet themes, but what gives the movie added interest—apart from its contemporary parallels—is that it posits Mandela as a variation on the Eastwood character: a lone voice of reason in a world committed to tearing itself apart. Like Letters from Iwo Jima and Gran Torino, Invictus argues for turning the other cheek.
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