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Andrew O'Hagan's rating
Nice try Clint Eastwood, but Invictus is unconvincing
By
Andrew O'Hagan
5 Feb 2010
Nobody could accuse Clint Eastwood of having a very complicated sense of human oppositions. Since his glory days in the poncho, he has exhibited a grave certainty about who’s a baddie and who’s a goodie and, since becoming a director, those certainties have become so embedded that everything he touches has a whiff of the epic about it.
But I have to say that Invictus makes Flags of Our Fathers look like an exercise in haunted simplicity, like a short novel by Samuel Beckett. The colours swell, the crowds swell, the message swells, the music swells, Matt Damon swells, until Invictus becomes a film that blots out the sun.
A film is a bit like parenting: it can’t be inspiring by design. It should just get on with it. Do its stuff. Hope for the best. Here, Morgan Freeman impersonates Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon plays François Pienaar, the captain of South Africa’s famous rugby team, the Springboks. As the film opens, Mandela is just coming out of prison after 27 years. South Africa goes to the polls and Mandela becomes President and, oh yes, the new rainbow nation will be set to host the Rugby World Cup final. Early in the mash-up, we see Nelson leaving his compound for his early-morning walk. This is all post-Winnie, so our hero is pictured as being very much alone. He is under pressure to bring about the changes he promised. His life may even be in danger. Cue sense of foreboding. Cue big music.
Nelson realises that an opportunity resides in the forthcoming rugby final. The South African national team is as white as a tray of champagne truffles, but the great man believes the country should get behind the team for the sake of unity and the needs of the country.
And so he does. But not before Damon has huffed and puffed and flexed his mighty thighs, to say nothing of his mighty vocal chords, as a blond god of Siff Effica on the road to Damascus. I mean, Nelson doesn’t have it easy: the Springbok players, most of them anyhow, moan for five minutes like a bunch of schoolboys who hate their homework. They don’t wanna sing the new national anthem and get all rainbowish. And there’s also an unwillingness problem with the black people, who initially see the Springboks, with justification, as representing everything racist and horrid. As President, Mandela loved revealing a symbolic opposition and melting it away — so does Eastwood, with bells on.
I don’t just mean to send Matt Damon up, because he is actually pretty effective as Pienaar. He will be a burly contender for this year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar. But it does take you a while to get over his general appearance: imagine if Lou Ferrigno, star of TV’s The Incredible Hulk, has decided to go all golden rather than green when he got angry. That’s Damon. He always plays characters who are slightly too willing to be changed, too capable of being inspired, and I left this film feeling Pienaar remained a bit of a mystery. But credit to Damon: he plays him for niceness, and niceness is often more mysterious in drama than badness is. Invictus is the name of a rubbishy (but inspiring) poem by William Henley: “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.” It was liked by Mandela while he was on Robben Island, and one of the good things about Damon’s turn as Pienaar lies in the half-suggestion that the rugby captain might not really have grasped its meaning.
But his actions fulfilled the message, and that’s the kind of thing Eastwood wishes actions to do. Morgan Freeman is said to have wanted to play Mandela for a long time: he has all his tics and gestures down pat, though he is sometimes too sonorous even for Mandela, who can be charmingly silly when the mood or the danceband takes him. The Mandela that Freeman and Eastwood want to claim is the boldest one: the man of destiny and the man of history, a living symbol of apartheid’s defeat and the glory of freedom.
That’s fine, and Freeman carries off some genuinely emotional scenes, coming into the rugby stadium wearing the Springboks colours when previously they were worn only by whites.
Biopics, even of the most saintly politicians, must beware of seeming like thunderous advertising. It is often a question of subtlety, and on that level Invictus is not a good movie.
It would pass muster as average TV material in a time of need but affection for its director, the legendary Eastwood, has already hoisted the picture into the Oscars frame, if not as many as was predicted. In films like this, nobody is ever in two minds about anything. Nobody is ever out of character. And that is a deficiency in the screenwriting that pays too little heed to the source material.
Invictus is one of those films that favours resonance over substance — the soundtrack alone could fell an oppressor at two thousand yards.
But my feeling is that cinematic gesturing will not quite do for Mandela. The politics were too strange and too new, and the country was too soaked in blood and shame. It can’t be Disneyfied very easily without a loss of credibility, and the experience of watching Invictus may leave many of you craving to escape from upliftingness into a zone of deeper explanation.
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Reader views (11)
Invictus? You really ARE having a laugh mate. Don't get me wrong: I love Clint. Thought Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino were EXCEPTIONAL. However, apart from Damon, and the usual superb direction from the Eastwood, this was DIRE!!
NO atmosphere, mediocre acting - yes, even from Freeman (re-hash of Shawshank Redemption) - long, drawn out, boring, FULL of bullshit propaganda......
COME ON CLINT!! I don't even have to ask - that's NOT the best you can do......AND IT WAS MOST DEFINITELY NOT CINEMATIC GOLD!
a waste of 14 pounds. cheers buddy.
- Justin John Carroll, Croydon, 25/02/2010 22:19
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I enjoyed the movie. But i was very disappointed to find out that at least 2 major things about this TRUE movie ain't so. The name, based on the historic poem. But a little research reveals that that was NOT the poem Mandela gave the captain.
The real poem he gave was: "The Man in the Arena". The Man in the Arena is the title of a speech given by Teddy Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on April 23, 1910.
The other obvious twist of the facts was the final score of the final game.
I understand "editorial license", that there are times when they need to make some minor changes to make the story "fit". But these two twists of the facts are NOT minor. They are very key parts of the story - even the title of the movie.
Why is it that history has to be re-told with lies just to make a "better" story? More money? More PC?
- David, Auckland, New Zealand, 13/02/2010 07:21
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Most films base on true stories when they are told they reflect the reality of the story.More stories has been told about South africa but I think this one was better illustrated and it truely reflect the change of South Africa We are leaving in now. As a south African leaving in South Africa I was very satisfied with the way the whole true story was potraid . Big -ups Eastwood.
- Thabani Langa, Pretoria, South Africa, 10/02/2010 15:42
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I was disappointed at reading Andrew's review, and wasn't sure what he felt the movie aimed to convert him to... As a white South African who was experiencing the events at the time in South Africa, I think the movie was excellent and captured the 'feel good' aspects of what was a difficult time.
Not all movies have to have depth and anguish at every moment to have value - this movie captures the elements of its key characters accurately and to the level that is required to tell a good story. There are lots of books for people to read if they want a greater amount of detail for Mandela or Pienaar, or for the changes happening in South Africa.
I have no idea where Andrew was during the early to mid-90's, but I doubt he was in South Africa, so his criticism seems far more false than any positive spin Eastwood has put into Invictus.
I enjoyed the movie, it made me remember the events of the time, and it felt accurate. Personally, I am happy to see that a positive story can be told - accurately - to show how change came to South Africa. I gave the film a 4/5.
- Sa_Abroad, London, UK, 06/02/2010 11:41
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I was at the final in Ellis Park in 1995.... I loved the film...
- Robin Heath, Westport, CT, USA, 05/02/2010 20:13
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as a South African who lived through the period in question, I would say this piece is pretty much on the money. I saw the movie and have to say it left me strangely unmoved...I'm an Eastwood fan as rule but this time...nice try but no cigar...
- Sefrican, Cape Town, 05/02/2010 16:12
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I read recent that Eastwood's reputation and favoured status in hollywood as a director has less to do with his artistic flair and vision, quite the contrary actually.
He's the best in the business at bringing a picture in on time, on budget, and without any auteuristic indulgences. he doesn't necessarily make good or artistic films, he doesn't deviate from script - he makes "cheap" films.
he's a producers dream.
- Scotty, London, 05/02/2010 16:07
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Very few people are interested in rugby and very few people are interested in SA anymore now that apartheid has gone and Mandela is no longer president.
Today's SA is not a pretty or inspiring country. it is awesomely dangerous, so dangerous that people do not live ordinary lives as we know them.
The new president has at least admitted the problem, unlike Mandela's successor, and is trying to do something about it.
The central point the film tries to make is reconciliation. But reconciliation never really happened.
It is certainly a Rainbow Nation. Like a rainbow, the colours remain resolutely separate, or 'apart'.
Even at the most liberal of private parties, you will virtually never see a black guest.
- David Short, Tunis, Tunisia, 05/02/2010 15:49
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"Since his glory days in the poncho, he has exhibited a grave certainty about who’s a baddie and who’s a goodie "
Do you really think that rather sweeping statement stands up when set against films like 'Unforgiven' and 'Mystic River'?
- Michael, London, 05/02/2010 13:41
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Nice try, O'Hagan, but your review is unconvincing. I saw Invictus in the US last month & thought it was a superbly understated piece of work. How typical of Eastwood to make a film in which the sport is just a part of a story about the strategy Mandela used to bring the country together. Invictus is another fine example of Eastwood's cool classicism, an approach that drives trendies like you up the wall. Long may he continue.
- Lazarus, London, UK, 05/02/2010 10:17
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What is the point of making a film about this? Make a documentary if you must with the actual individuals, but this is surely just a waste of energy. Reality is more powerful than any film could be. Another bank account filling exercise for the celebs or am I being cynical?
- Patrick, London, 05/02/2010 10:02
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