Delayed Reaction: Invictus

Premise: Newly elected Nelson Mandela uses the national Rugby team as a tool to bring racial harmony to a healing nation.

 

This movie is absolutely that thing that people attack Hollywood movies for all the time. It's an inspirational movie about fixing racism. It oversimplies a deeply complex history and the racial dynamics of South Africa into a feel-good story. It's fair to go after it like a Green Book if you want. Clint Eastwood isn't the best director for this kind of topic. All of this is true in aggregate. Hollywood is way too fond of praising small gains as great triumphs.

 

That doesn't mean Invictus is bad though. In fact, I kind of liked it. Morgan Freeman is one of the few actors who can pull off the gravitas of Nelson Mandela. The film does a great job of explaining the challenge Mandela faced when he was elected. It's true that the black population of South Africa owes nothing to the white population that oppressed them for so long, but the power structure of the country was so precarious that meeting them with spite was never going to work. Meanwhile, the rugby side of the film with Matt Damon is more about the team realizing their position as a unifying symbol than it's about being a straight sports movie. This is much less of a sports movie than I expected. Eastwood really isn't very interested in capturing the strategy of the rugby or the exact path to victory. I have no idea what the final score was or what it would mean by the end.

 

What's funny about movies like this is that most are perfectly fine. I liked Green Book. It's a perfectly fine movie. There are just a lot of movies like it or Invictus and they rarely have anything new to add to the discussion. At some point it seems like Hollywood or society collectively saying "See racism isn't that bad, because we can find these individual stories of things turning out alright". It feels like they are placating audiences. So, when something like a Green Book wins Best Picture, it feels like people are saying that's as deep as the discourse needs to get.

 

So, yeah. Invictus is a good enough movie, but it's not the end of a discussion. It's really the kind of movie that should make you curious to look up Apartheid on Wikipedia, and there's value in that. It's pretty mediocre as a sports movie. It's the best role Morgan Freeman has had since it came out 12 years ago. The Matt Damon Oscar nomination for this is really silly but what are you going to do? This should not be seen if you are looking for a sports movie. 

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend