Invictus

Morgan Freeman deserves an Oscar for this uplifting film about forgiveness and reconciliation in South Africa.

Morgan Freeman is not God, but he played the role convincingly in Bruce Almighty (2003). In Invictus, the new Clint Eastwood film, he does not play God but rather Nelson Mandela, depicted in the film as a contemporary Gandhi who combines sublime morality with political savvy. is performance is so remarkable that one imagines Eastwood had cast Mandela himself, and already the nominations for awards have begun.

Based on John Carlin's book, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, the film tells a true story. In 1994, just out of prison and now the new head of state, Mandela shocks his own supporters and surprises his opponents by throwing his full support behind the South African rugby team known as the Springboks. Matt Damon plays Francois Pineaar, the captain of the team. To black South Africans, the nearly all white team represents racism, apartheid, and all that had oppressed them for centuries. They wanted the team, a disgrace to the new nation, abolished. The whites expected as much and looked to a gloomy future for themselves.

But Mandela, who shares the views of his black countrymen, realizes that the Springboks symbolize the white minority whose help he will need to forge a nation. So he preaches forgiveness and moving ahead towards a future of national unity. The Springboks and the World Cup of rugby to be held that year in Johannesburg become the center and test of his vision.

As a corollary to this support for the Springboks, he further shocks his "team" by insisting that a heightened need for his personal security be met by recruiting from the Special Forces, the all white police squad that specialized in intimidating and brutalizing the black population. The Welsh actor Julian Lewis Jones, square jawed and shaven head, convincingly plays the leader of this bunch, a group of toughs anyone would wish to avoid. He reminds one of Dirty Harry Callahan, just waiting for someone to step out of line so as to make his day. Only Mandela's charisma and leadership overcome the natural antipathy the blacks feel about this policy of forgiveness.

Once the film sets up the problem faced by Mandela, it shows the progress of the Springboks, heretofore considered a mediocre team. At each of their victories, we see the racial barriers falling. Prior to the final match against the New Zealand "All Blacks," Mandela comes onto the field, dressed in Springbok green and gold.

As the match progresses we witness a scene outside the stadium in which a black newsboy, who earlier had shunned the Springboks, tries to get near white policemen listening to the game on their car radio. At first the whites turn him away, but as victory nears, in a series of shots, the boy gets closer and closer till at the end, the police embrace him and lift him joyously over their heads. Even the Special Forces toughs break down and smile.

Once Mandela embarks on this policy, he does everything personally to inspire the team to victory. At one point he arranges for their trip to the island prison where he spent 27 years, so they can see his cell and appreciate what he suffered and what he overcame.

He confides to Pineaar that William Ernest Henley's 1875 poem, "Invictus" (Unconquered) kept his hopes alive. He handwrites a copy of the poem and gives it to Pineaar so that he too will become inspired. In the film we hear but the last two lines, but the entire poem is worth quoting. It provokes nostalgia for both Victorian uplift and the lost art of meter and rhyme.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Happily, Eastwood and Anthony Peckham, the screenwriter, dropped Playing the Enemy as a title and chose Invictus.

Once the film sets up the situation and the problem, there is not much drama. The only conflict occurs in the rugby matches, the final one of which takes eighteen minutes of screen time. There's no intrigue, no twists of plot, no personal dilemmas that reflect or relate to the national one, just an onward and upward movement. Matt Damon simply jogs through his role, looking with blonde hair much like the young Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Talented Mr Ripley (1999).

The only villain in the film is the past, which is implied, not shown. Nevertheless, the performance of Freeman, the great themes of forgiveness and fraternity, and the spectacular cinematography, all shot on location in South Africa, transform an uplifting true story into an admirable film.

William Park is a veteran film reviewer and the author of Hollywood: An Epic Production, a highly praised verse history of American cinema. He lives in California.

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