Well it's December, kids, time to belly up to the box office and let old Uncle Clint give you a tingle. With Invictus, this year he's packing a story of redemption and reconciliation, South African-style. It features an unassailably heroic elder statesman, his unlikely young aide-de-camp, lots of athletic hoo-ha and a terrifically loaded socio-historical context winnowed within a millimeter of credulity. Morgan Freeman worked for years on an adaptation of Nelson Mandela's autobiography but eventually abandoned the project: it was simply too much story, too much history, to fit into a feature film. By choosing Clint Eastwood to adapt a more self-contained episode from Mandela's life -- the alliance he built with South Africa's rugby team as president in 1995, an elaborate campaign to win the World Cup that he felt would help unify a broken country -- Freeman let go of his attachment to a comprehensive portrait. Indeed, a product of his ruthless narrative efficiency is Eastwood's useful (and often very successful) habit of sacrificing story for sentiment.
After a quick, newsreel-style run through Mandela's release from prison in 1990 after 27 years served for his anti-apartheid activity and subsequent rise to the presidency of South Africa, Mandela (played by Freeman) makes his first rousing speech to an office full of confused white people. Fleeting reference is made to those who would quit rather than work for a black man, but Mandela makes it clear that all are welcome to stay -- that his mandate is reconciliation, not revenge. The more interesting flip-side of this strategy is Mandela's notion of using forgiveness as a weapon, disarming those who hate on instinct by wiping the slate clean. It was his most extraordinary gift to his country, and Freeman manages to capture both the charm and the canny that sustained this strange creature through incarceration and brought a wary populace, if briefly, to a level of unity it had never experienced.
The only up-close notion we get of the country's vicious disunity is via Mandela's security detail. Initially an all-black unit, they are forced to work with an all-white group who are more experienced and have cooler sunglasses. An early scene of the two factions butting heads -- it's actually the blacks complaining and the whites standing around looking smug -- is stilted and unnatural, and not in any useful way. Eastwood's reportedly high-octane shooting style often results in scenes that look like they could have used a couple of extra takes. He's more successful at setting up tension around the president's safety; a cup is chucked in his direction at an early rugby game, and at his every appearance thereafter the threat of assassination looms ominously.
Mandela affects oblivion, and very well, although "he sees everything," as his lead agent points out. What he picks up on at that first rugby game he attends, is that the Springboks, South Africa's flailing rugby team, are an apt symbol for the country's sickness. Worshiped by Afrikaners and loathed by black South Africans, the green and gold team colors are worn proudly by the former but would get the latter's ass whipped on the street. In the stroke of PR brilliance, Mandela asks the team's captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to lead his team to victory at the World Cup. Amazingly, Pienaar manages to do just that.
The line between Mandela as human calculator and Mandela as saint is one that screenwriter Anthony Peckham (who adapted John Carlin's book, Playing the Enemy) is forced to walk like a narrative plank: there's trouble in either direction. Because Invictus (a title taken from that of William Ernest Henley's poem; its last lines, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul" are invoked several times) only glances on history and is not a particularly well-wrought character study, Eastwood leans on the shorthand for sainthood to bond us to Freeman's upright, endearing old gent. Although one character addresses the issue directly, pointing out that Mandela is "a man, not a saint," all evidence is to the contrary. Indeed, the hints at Mandela's personal life, including an estranged wife and disgruntled children, are made on the plane of a politician's disingenuous response to a question about fatal flaws: I just work too hard; I care too much.
Damon, sporting 15 extra pounds of beefcake, Hitler Youth hair, and a little blob of putty to butch up his button nose, attacks the Afrikaaner accent and his game face with his typical overachiever's commitment. "We need to farkis!" He screams at his teammates. "Farkis! Farkis!" Up there with the Newfoundland accent in terms of toughness, Damon nails the dialect like a champ, and it's a good thing, because it's one of the few opportunities his character has to make a mark.
Eastwood lavishes time on the final game between New Zealand and South Africa (including a spellbinding Maori warrior routine done by the former before the game), which wouldn't be a bad thing if a) rugby were at all comprehensible to the uninitiated, or b) he had any gift for shooting sports sequences. The still photos that appear of the actual players during the credits have more velocity. Rugby, a game that is basically designed to collapse on itself, does not lend itself to the form -- a predicament Eastwood attempts to solve with lots of portentous slo-mo between the field and the healing effects it is having on the spectators. What was clearly a spectacular but extremely complicated moment for the people of South Africa feels both tarted up and dumbed down in this hyper-conventional conception; it's a testament, most of all, to Eastwood's enduringly roughshod aesthetic.