Unvictorious

For the first half of Invictus, I admired Clint Eastwood’s economical old-master filmmaking, but in the second half the film bogged down in sports movie clichés, about perhaps the most boring, incomprehensible sport in the world, rugby.  All the way through, Morgan Freeman is very impressive as Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon is better than all right as the captain of the Springboks, the rugby team that Mandela, just two years out of prison and beginning his term as president, wants to convert from a symbol of apartheid into a vehicle for national reconciliation and unity, just in time for the 1995 World Cup, being held in South Africa to welcome it back into the international community of nations.  If only the film had avoided re-creation of the crucial games (as did the Iranian soccer masterpiece Offside), or just sketched it in as background to characterization (as they do in the marvelous football series, Friday Night Lights), then it would have an interesting story of forgiveness as a political strategy, and the subversion of popular culture into wise governance.  Instead, the film offers uplift as cornball as the Victorian poem from which it takes its title.  (2009, dvd)  *6*  (MC-74)

I only watched Invictus because I’d caught The 16^th Man on ESPN’s frequently admirable “30 for 30” documentary series, which told the real story of the Springboks’ unlikely success in a much more gripping manner, as far as I’m concerned.  The doc seemed to spend less time on actual game footage than the feature film did, more on the sociological and world historical implications instead of the undeniably stirring sports miracle.  So the hour-long documentary -- produced by Morgan Freeman incidentally, with Mandela himself making an even better Mandela than him -- would be a better use of your time than the two-hour-plus feature film.