Uma proposta cinematográfica
por Philip French The Observer, Sunday 7 February 2010 larger
Clint Eastwood scores yet again with a rousing tale of the moment when Nelson Mandela harnessed the power of rugby to unite South Africa
Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Clint Eastwood's Invictus. Photograph: Keith Bernstein
Clint Eastwood has been acting in movies for 55 years and directing them for 40. Astonishingly, in an industry that favours youth and discourages originality, he's been doing his best and boldest work in his eighth decade. It seemed he'd reached a creative zenith when he returned to his roots with the classic western Unforgiven in 1992. But since the turn of the century, he's made 10 immensely varied films, including a remarkable defence of euthanasia, Million Dollar Baby, the superb diptych of Second World War films, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, a documentary on piano blues and a deeply felt story of a man rethinking his values in late middle age, Gran Torino.
Invictus
Production year: 2009Country: USACert (UK): 12ARuntime: 133 minsDirectors: Clint EastwoodCast: Julian Lewis Jones, Matt Damon, Matt Stern, Morgan Freeman, Patrick Mofokeng, Tony KgorogeMore on this filmNot all of these films have been particularly subtle, but each has been a fine piece of storytelling, and they've embraced in a generous, unsanctimonious manner a rare range of human sympathies and of characters, extending from an aristocratic Japanese general to blue-collar, Irish-American Bostonians.
The majestic Invictus, the most rousing movie about sport since Chariots of Fire, fits very much into this pattern. It's an account of the relationship between President Nelson Mandela and Francois Pienaar, captain of the South Africa team in the 1995 Rugby World Cup tournament. A manipulative, deeply emotional film, it's openly committed to a belief in the basic decency of mankind, unafraid of an accusation of sentimentality and unabashed in its inspirational aim of drawing people together in a form of communion.
The movie begins with a forthright image of a divided society in 1990. Just released from 27 years of incarceration, Mandela drives along a road that runs between two playing fields. On one side, ragged black kids play football on a dirt pitch between rusty goalposts; on the other, immaculately kitted-out white boys play rugby on a neatly tended grass pitch. The black kids shout excitedly as Mandela passes, the white lads' coach says: "This is the day our country went to the dogs."
The movie then leaps forward to Mandela's election as president in 1994. Settling into a terrifying task in which he seeks forgiveness and reconciliation, he first surprises his inherited staff by offering to keep them on. He then brings in hardline Afrikaners to join his black bodyguards. These scenes are beautifully handled, and although Morgan Freeman is no Mandela lookalike, he gets just right that slight stoop, the rolling gait and the slow, decisive speech, and is soon in authoritative command of the movie.
Crucial is the controversial decision to risk alienating his black followers by preventing the new sports council from abolishing the Springboks rugby team and its green-and-gold uniform. This leads to the positive move to bring the nation together in support of the team at the 1995 World Cup.
At two key moments, the movie has a forceful topicality. Before dawn on his first day in office, Mandela and his bodyguards make their way to the parliament in Pretoria and a van driver drops a pile of Afrikaans newspapers on the pavement in front of them. Mandela translates the headline: "He can win an election but can he rule the country?" The bodyguards bridle at the insult but Mandela remarks: "It's a legitimate question." This is the significant Barack Obama moment.
Later, when he decides to use the rugby championship for both moral and political purposes, he invites Francois Pienaar (an able and convincing performance by Matt Damon) to have tea with him. Pienaar, a middle-class man of conventional views, is the captain of a badly failing team, then in the process of returning to international rugby after years of exclusion during apartheid. To test whether he is the man for the great task he has in mind, Mandela asks him about his philosophy of leadership. To lead by example is his reply and we know, through the honest directness Damon embodies, that he is a man capable of moral growth.
At this point, we inevitably think of the current controversy over the status of John Terry's England football captaincy and are aware of what has been happening to professional sport and its practitioners. Interestingly, in the early days of apartheid, Alan Paton followed up Cry the Beloved Country with Too Late the Phalarope, the tragic hero of which is an Afrikaner rugby star whose life is transformed through an illegal affair with a black girl.
There are wonderful sequences in this film. Blunt but unforgettable is the visit Pienaar and his team make to Robben Island where Mandela was jailed for 18 years in appalling conditions. Pienaar tries to imagine what life was like there, and on the soundtrack Mandela reads "Invictus" , the short Victorian poem by WE Henley that ends with the couplet "I am the master of my fate/ I am the captain of my soul" that had sustained him in prison.
The final 45 minutes are dominated by a series of rugby games and it's splendid at last to have a change from American football. Offhand, I can only think of a small handful of rugby pictures: Lindsay Anderson's near-great This Sporting Life, which presents the game in an dispiriting light; Alive, where Uruguayan rugby players eat their dead team mates when stranded in the Andes; and Roger Vadim's La curée (aka The Game Is Over) in which Jane Fonda' seduces Peter McEnery, her rugby playing stepson. We have Eastwood to thank for making the match sequences lucid, lively, convincing and uplifting. Eastwood has also worked with his musician son Kyle to produce a remarkable soundtrack drawing on a wide variety of South African music.
Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Clint Eastwood's Invictus. Photograph: Keith Bernstein
Clint Eastwood has been acting in movies for 55 years and directing them for 40. Astonishingly, in an industry that favours youth and discourages originality, he's been doing his best and boldest work in his eighth decade. It seemed he'd reached a creative zenith when he returned to his roots with the classic western Unforgiven in 1992. But since the turn of the century, he's made 10 immensely varied films, including a remarkable defence of euthanasia, Million Dollar Baby, the superb diptych of Second World War films, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, a documentary on piano blues and a deeply felt story of a man rethinking his values in late middle age, Gran Torino.
Invictus
Production year: 2009Country: USACert (UK): 12ARuntime: 133 minsDirectors: Clint EastwoodCast: Julian Lewis Jones, Matt Damon, Matt Stern, Morgan Freeman, Patrick Mofokeng, Tony KgorogeMore on this filmNot all of these films have been particularly subtle, but each has been a fine piece of storytelling, and they've embraced in a generous, unsanctimonious manner a rare range of human sympathies and of characters, extending from an aristocratic Japanese general to blue-collar, Irish-American Bostonians.
The majestic Invictus, the most rousing movie about sport since Chariots of Fire, fits very much into this pattern. It's an account of the relationship between President Nelson Mandela and Francois Pienaar, captain of the South Africa team in the 1995 Rugby World Cup tournament. A manipulative, deeply emotional film, it's openly committed to a belief in the basic decency of mankind, unafraid of an accusation of sentimentality and unabashed in its inspirational aim of drawing people together in a form of communion.
The movie begins with a forthright image of a divided society in 1990. Just released from 27 years of incarceration, Mandela drives along a road that runs between two playing fields. On one side, ragged black kids play football on a dirt pitch between rusty goalposts; on the other, immaculately kitted-out white boys play rugby on a neatly tended grass pitch. The black kids shout excitedly as Mandela passes, the white lads' coach says: "This is the day our country went to the dogs."
The movie then leaps forward to Mandela's election as president in 1994. Settling into a terrifying task in which he seeks forgiveness and reconciliation, he first surprises his inherited staff by offering to keep them on. He then brings in hardline Afrikaners to join his black bodyguards. These scenes are beautifully handled, and although Morgan Freeman is no Mandela lookalike, he gets just right that slight stoop, the rolling gait and the slow, decisive speech, and is soon in authoritative command of the movie.
Crucial is the controversial decision to risk alienating his black followers by preventing the new sports council from abolishing the Springboks rugby team and its green-and-gold uniform. This leads to the positive move to bring the nation together in support of the team at the 1995 World Cup.
At two key moments, the movie has a forceful topicality. Before dawn on his first day in office, Mandela and his bodyguards make their way to the parliament in Pretoria and a van driver drops a pile of Afrikaans newspapers on the pavement in front of them. Mandela translates the headline: "He can win an election but can he rule the country?" The bodyguards bridle at the insult but Mandela remarks: "It's a legitimate question." This is the significant Barack Obama moment.
Later, when he decides to use the rugby championship for both moral and political purposes, he invites Francois Pienaar (an able and convincing performance by Matt Damon) to have tea with him. Pienaar, a middle-class man of conventional views, is the captain of a badly failing team, then in the process of returning to international rugby after years of exclusion during apartheid. To test whether he is the man for the great task he has in mind, Mandela asks him about his philosophy of leadership. To lead by example is his reply and we know, through the honest directness Damon embodies, that he is a man capable of moral growth.
At this point, we inevitably think of the current controversy over the status of John Terry's England football captaincy and are aware of what has been happening to professional sport and its practitioners. Interestingly, in the early days of apartheid, Alan Paton followed up Cry the Beloved Country with Too Late the Phalarope, the tragic hero of which is an Afrikaner rugby star whose life is transformed through an illegal affair with a black girl.
There are wonderful sequences in this film. Blunt but unforgettable is the visit Pienaar and his team make to Robben Island where Mandela was jailed for 18 years in appalling conditions. Pienaar tries to imagine what life was like there, and on the soundtrack Mandela reads "Invictus" , the short Victorian poem by WE Henley that ends with the couplet "I am the master of my fate/ I am the captain of my soul" that had sustained him in prison.
The final 45 minutes are dominated by a series of rugby games and it's splendid at last to have a change from American football. Offhand, I can only think of a small handful of rugby pictures: Lindsay Anderson's near-great This Sporting Life, which presents the game in an dispiriting light; Alive, where Uruguayan rugby players eat their dead team mates when stranded in the Andes; and Roger Vadim's La curée (aka The Game Is Over) in which Jane Fonda' seduces Peter McEnery, her rugby playing stepson. We have Eastwood to thank for making the match sequences lucid, lively, convincing and uplifting. Eastwood has also worked with his musician son Kyle to produce a remarkable soundtrack drawing on a wide variety of South African music.
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