Invictus

When was it, exactly, that Disney infiltrated Clint Eastwood's brain?

Invictus takes its title (and most of its creed) from an anthem by a minor poet Nelson Mandela read while jailed on Robben Island. According to Mandela, or Morgan Freeman, or somebody, anyway, its moody strut of casual defiance sustained the prisoner's spirits even when dignity and compassion came only in the stones on which he lay and in the grateful body that, every night, after torturous hours of work--and useless work, at that--spared him the grief of further consciousness. He memorized the poem (so we're told) and recited it to himself throughout his long confinement. When finally freed, Mandela took this half-forgotten piece of late Victorian kitsch and turned it into a strategy for nation-building. So how does rugby fit in to this plan? I don't know either. I guess you had to be there.

Clint Eastwood, so far as I can tell, has never made a technically bad movie. Even Gran Torino, which Slothrop misunderstood not to be a piece of sentimental hash, works well structurally and communicates its purpose easily and effectively. Invictus also bears that mark of surety. What it's so sure about, or why, I don't know. Now, I know as much about South African history as the next uneducated American, which is nothing, so I'm only speculating, but even in the movie's first few minutes I sensed that Eastwood's script radically oversimplified its subject. Rugby heals the wounds of a socially, racially, and politically disturbed country? For a month, maybe. And then real life begins again.

Ultimately I'm not convinced this story needs to be told at all. Or, if it does, it needs to be told by Lars Von Trier, whose opinion on rugby's transformative power I'd love to know. Throughout, the movie felt noxiously sterile in a sort of formal way but also icky and saccharine. All told, it's a rather stupid and unbearable story. Also, Freeman's Mandela comes off like a hallmark card or a cartoon Jesus. I'm sure that guy kicked a dog or told a lie or bit somebody somewhere, sometime. He's a great leader and a heroic man, but, come on, he isn't Gandhi. Even Gandhi wasn't Gandhi. Mohandas also had his problems.

Most of the other characters are one-dimensional props. Even Matt Damon, who usually turns the flattest characters into Carnival, doesn't have much to do but think deeply about rugby and, when he isn't practicing, spread the word on that asinine poem.

When I watch a great movie, one that I know is worlds, lives, religions above me, I feel as though I've been given a puzzle I can play with for the rest of my life and never solve, never exhaust, never complete. That feeling is fantastic and overwhelming. Good. When I watch a bad movie, or even a good movie that's made mistakes, I think about what went wrong, how the film broke apart against its limitations, how its flaws could be corrected, or whether they should be corrected. In both cases, good and bad, my response is what can I do with this? When I watched Invictus--and this is the only time I have ever felt this reaction--I thought, this story can't possibly be told any better. That, my friends, is not a good thought to think. A plot that can't be improved is a plot that shouldn't exist. Invictus is a well-designed movie that would serve the world much better had it never existed.

Also, just for fun facts, Mandela isn't the only fan of William Ernest Henley's poem. Timothy McVeigh copied it in his own hand as his final written statement before being executed. I guess for him it meant something altogether different than unity and the quiet heart. D+