Invictus

Editorial

On May 30, Clint Eastwood is 80. Not that it's stopping him, he seems, to try anything. Now comes the impressively improbable combo of Nelson Mandela's testy first years fixing South Africa and the posh-boy mania of rugby union's World Cup.

As you would expect, the result is noble, elegant and warm-hearted. Eastwood has no need to show-off, but nothing feels less than expert. Invictus is mature, unfussy moviemaking on the kind of historical canvas that gives the Academy a hot flush. But, for once, there's something slightly disengaged about this. It doesn't feel grand. Morgan Freeman is 72 playing a 75-year-old Nelson Mandela. He has perfected that oddly inelegant diction: soft, slow, studied, and full of drafty pauses. Freeman does more than imitate the great man. He absorbs him and then pours forth an emotionally cogent version.
Wise to the slipstreams of politics, Mandela made what would seem a counter-intuitive decision: to embrace the loathed Springbok rugby team as a symbol for the unity of his country. Draped in Apartheid's hated green and gold, and with only a single black player, they embodied the old guard and the bleak years of Afrikaner oppression.

Matt Damon is 39 and has achieved that oxymoronic quality, the normal superstar. Even so, he manages De Niro-like immersion — he looks and sounds exactly like the blond-topped, beefcake South African rugby captain. If Freeman's Mandela is the film's head, then Damon's Francois Pienaar is its heart. His journey to enlightenment comes with calm authority and a half-decent spiral pass.

The great final versus the Kiwis' invincible (and ironically nicknamed) All Blacks, where Mandela's dream is met with last-gasp triumph, was in truth a tight, ingloriously defensive saga without a try to its name. Not that that stops Eastwood wringing every inspirational sentiment out of it.

Ian Nathan