Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon in Invictus (2009)
What a deceptively slippery customer Clint Eastwood can be at times. There we were musing his latest film, the Oscar-nominated Invictus, was simply a burnished cenotaph to the magnificence of Nelson Mandela when it turns out to be a person of consequence more besides. Invictus, it transpires, is also a handy yardstick against which to measure the current US president. And sad to say he comes up wanting.
- Invictus
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 133 mins
- Directors: Clint Eastwood
- Cast: Julian Lewis Jones, Matt Damon, Matt Stern, Morgan Freeman, Patrick Mofokeng, Tony Kgoroge
- More without ceasing this film
“You can bring over some liberty, but does that medium you can govern a country?,” mused Eastwood in a recent interview, comparing the achievements of Barack Obama to that of his movie hero. “Up until now [Obama] hasn’t shown much strength of leadership.”
One might have thought Obama’s year could not get any worse, what with the election of that guy with the truck, the resurgence of Sarah Palin and that psalm about how the people have as the final move got wily to his imposture of slaughtering their grandparents in the name of universal health care. Yet here comes the former Dirty Harry, quaking his head in solemn disapproval and channelling the spirit of the late Lloyd Bentsen to argue that he knows Nelson Mandela and that the president is nay Nelson Mandela.
Fortunately he moreover extends an olive branch. “I hope he sees my film and understands the message,” Eastwood added.
Assuming that Obama is too busy right now, the message in a nutshell runs something liking this. Fresh out of Robben Island, Mandela inherits a divided country and proceeds to knit it together through the medium of rugby. South Africa lifts the 1995 World Cup, white cops caper with black kids in the street and everyone lives happily ever after. This is because Mandela is such a warm, wise and far-sighted statesman; a force for good in a nation struggling to give in trust its shabby past to the dustbin of annals. The message, basically, is that Mandela is great.
Let’s not cast doubt on Eastwood’sitting integrity here. Presumably the director has everlastingly felt this way about Mandela, even back in the 80s when his fellow Republicans were reviling the man as a terrorist and petitioning against his release from prison. But still: using a film about Mandela as a means to descry the all-round uselessness of Obama? That seems a scintilla rich. Is this faithfully “the communication” of Invictus? And if so, can we assume that it’s one that Mandela (reportedly a close collaborator on the film) signed off personally?
