Movie Review: Invictus

I am so grateful to have seen Invictus by myself. I went after work alone which allowed me time to marinate in the afterglow all the way home without the invasion of another opinion. After so much criticism of the movie, (it trivializes the bringing together of black and white in South Africa, as if it could be done by a rugby game; there is no historical foundation laid during the film to bring us to where it begins, etc.), I was happy to have a few minutes to find my own point of view.

I have to state to the NFL guys who read my blog (including those of you attending our Christmas lunch last Friday at work) that you need to go and watch a Rugby match because it makes the NFL look like a sissy sport. Rugby, which is clearly football without the protective gear, is like watching present day deep sea divers versus those that dove decades ago wearing the under the sea space suit. Those playing American football should be embarrassed. Rugby is the real man’s game. But I digress as usual; it’s not about the manliness of rugby.

The rugby is really a backdrop for the lesson of forgiveness, inspiration and inclusion. I don’t think Mandela really expected anyone to believe that it saved the country’s prejudice issues. Jeez guys, give it a break. It shows so very clearly, however, the absurdity of our prejudices; self-motivation turning to self-mutilation; our focus on differences on the outside rather than the similarities of our souls inside.

There are some lines that scream the message…

“In sport, as in life, how do we inspire ourselves to greatness?”

“Forgiveness liberates the soul.”

“You never play at 100 percent,” Matt Damon tells Morgan during their first meeting when asked if his injury is better. Pregnant pause follows so we can surely make the connection that Mandela can’t play at 100 percent either because he was locked up for 28 years.

Sometimes I think that Clint thinks we are all stupid and he needs to write it down for us. Simmer down Clint and give us a little credit. Stop hitting us over the head with it all. Just tell the story.

Let’s face it though, Clint Eastwood is a funny (not ha ha funny, but rather strange funny) guy and a complicated director. I have heard (now that I live in LA, I know everything about everyone from Hollywood) that he’s a bastard – a tough, uncompromising self-absorbed personage. I think you can see that in the film. He has a sensitive side, but takes it only so far before he retreats back into the ‘don’t get too close to me’ zone. Mandela’s painful relationship with his daughter shows up, but he doesn’t go deep enough. And we all know that Morgan Freeman can do it, he just wasn’t allowed to.

I have decided that in these films where actors are playing people we recognize, they should never use actors we know. It’s hard to see the famous person in the actor, and alas, we see the actor rather than the character. If they use actors that are not well known, I can make them into the person they are playing that I recognize. Just a suggestion for those casting peeps in the future. Trust me on this. And, Matt Damon, I’m surprised you allowed them to not make you play rugby. You are missing in the playing sequences, and the fact that you didn’t get yourself too dirty playing the roll is a problem. And, your accent that is worse than me when I’m doing my British accent. Morgan Freeman, you as usual, are perfect in every way.

Now, let’s get to the title of the movie and the poem behind it.

Written in 1975 and published in 1888, Invictus (translating to Unconquered from Latin) was penned by the English poet William Ernest Henley. He was plagued with tuberculosis of the bone and had to have his infected foot amputated. During one of his hospitalizations he wrote the poem. The fact that Timothy McVeigh made the poem his last words on earth, reciting them just before he died doesn’t help the poem’s fame, but I do think it’s one of the finest poems every written, and one of the few poems that actually moves me toward something as well.

Invictus

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 bludgeoning 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.

Scream it from every rooftop. I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. And, go see the movie. You will be glad you did.