First, that despite all previous evidence, Eastwood is far from infallible as a director. And second, great history does not automatically translate to great cinema. No matter how important, uplifting or unbelievable a story is, directors and screenwriters still have to sell their audience on nagging little things like character development and pacing (for an example of these elements functioning at their best, see Eastwood's modern classic, Letters From Iwo Jima).
Sadly, Invictus is, for the most part, a lifeless historical pageant which appears mannered at its best moments and downright sloppy at its worst. The ideas behind it are broad and overdone (i.e. we can accomplish anything when we set aside our differences), underscored by clumsy, on-the-nose moments and dialogue and the all-too occasional rough edit.
That the film is formulaic seems irrelevant and certainly not the cause of all its woes. Eastwood is, at heart, a studio director, and a damn fine one at that. He has done wonders with genre framework in the past (Mystic River, Unforgiven). But with Invictus, he never completely commits to the road-to-the-championship sports movie that he has laid out in front of him. He defies the genre without inverting or twisting it, allowing his audience none of the excitement supposedly capturing South Africa as its rugby team makes the improbable run through the World Cup.
And, to tell the truth, District 9 had a lot more to say about South African apartheid. Seriously.
Invictus -- Eastwood Pushes Morgan Freeman to the Front of the Class for a History Lesson
The film opens on the most basic of social-cinematic cliches -- we see children, white rugby players in uniform, practicing on a beautifully groomed, fenced in grounds. Camera pans to reveal (have you guessed it yet?) black children, playing soccer in a beat up, dirty field. It'd be a forgivable move if Invictus had bothered to actually explore the chasm between the white Afrikaners and the native black population, but really, it's just convenient visual shorthand.
Riding down the middle of the street between these separate worlds is the motorcade of Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) who goes from 27 years of imprisonment to the president of post-apartheid South Africa in 1994. Ever the savvy politician as well as peaceful humanitarian, Mandela throws his support to the white-supported South African rugby team, the Springboks, as a means of uniting his country as it hosts the 1995 World Cup.
To Freeman's credit, the actor mostly overcomes his star image in portraying Mandela, and he does so without a whole lot of material to chew into. There are a few, small glimpses into the lonely man who describes his family as "42 million" strong, and the argument could be made that Invictus never intended to take that angle in examining its central subject.
Without Focus, Invictus Marches Onward Through Hokey Music Cues and Low-Key Sports Action
That of course brings up one very important question: What is Invictus about? If the film is meant to focus on the racial unity angle (which let's face it, hasn't exactly been mission accomplished in reality), then there seems to be a real issue in that every non-Mandela character is used like a talking stage prop. They come equipped with vague back stories of police brutality or racism, which they spout every now and then, presumably to aid those who have dosed off during the film's 134-minute running time.
Invictus couldn't possibly be about rugby, because, as previously mentioned, the director takes very little interest in the goings-on in the stadium. As Springboks captain Francois Pienaar, Matt Damon handles the accent well and looks believable on and off the field, and hey, for all we know he could be completely channeling the real-life Pienaar. But on the screen, the performance, along with everything else in the film, doesn't offer much to grasp into.
It'd be nice to at least walk away from the film muttering something about how sound Eastwood's direction and Tom Stern's camera work is. Alas, the understated nature of Eastwood/Stern's collaborative mise-en-scene works against Invictus, making the not-so-subtle bits stand out awfully. No joke, Mandela steps out of a helicopter to greet the Springboks team while someone on the soundtrack is singing "I am color blind" (swing-and-a-miss).
And what better way to appreciate the final minutes of the championship match then by experiencing it in slow motion? Watching the fans (both in the stadium and some casually inserted viewers at home) and other characters around Mandela celebrate, it'd be nice to share even a fraction of the excitement, which is what the best sports movies do (Hoosiers comes to mind), no matter how predetermined the outcome might be.
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