The trouble with telling a story about Nelson Mandela is that it’s a story about a nation. It’s about freedom, democracy, white guilt, equality, love. Humanity even. Never about just one man. To try and whittle it all down to a man’s political ambitions realised through a sport and to try and sell this tale to everyone outside the Boerewors Curtain is an exercise in futility.
But who are we to tell Hollywood this?
Director Clint Eastwood enlists Morgan Freeman to play Madiba and Matt Damon to play 90s SA Rugby Team (the Springboks) captain, Francois Pienaar in a drama that cost $75 million to produce while shooting in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
We follow Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, the disdain, and frankly, outrage that some white people meet the news with, onto a national rugby team that has seen better days. To cut a long, disjointed story short, Freeman’s Mandela tells Pienaar about a poem that inspires him, then – poof! – magically the Springboks become World Cup champions!
The events of and preceeding June 24 1995 (the Cup finals) are documented using very little attention to detail and a lot of selective memory. Does anyone else remember the Hyndai Getz being around in the early 90s? And that Range Rover Sport?
I get it, I do. Eastwood and co made an apartheid movie and sold it as a movie NOT about apartheid. They want people to move on, get over it, tell a story about how Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to heal wounds apartheid left behind, right?
Uh-huh.
It’s not that the accents – even those of some of the Springboks (was that Irish I spotted?) – are way, way, way off. I guess it’s hard for anyone to say Rolihlahla. It’s not that the plot and often the dialogue was unbelievable at the most and left you stunned at the least.
It’s not that many of the scenes where Chester Williams, the only non-white man on the team (and also the film’s rugby technical advisor on set) appeared in incited raucous laughter from the back of the cinema. It’s not that Ster Kinekor made me pay R48 to watch this story!
It wasn’t even that Madiba’s security men (with the supremely talented Tony Kgoroge as its head) were the most authentically South African and therefore the shining bit of the film that threw me for a loop.
It is the fact that in Invictus, the subtly flirtatious Madiba comes across as a man who singlehandedly placed political ambition for the nation over loving his immediate family. And I for one, think that’s wrong. But as already mentioned, the trouble with telling a story about Nelson Mandela is that it’s a story about a nation.
Perhaps it’s time people stopped trying to.
5 things I learned watching Invictus:
1. Invictus means unconquered in Latin
2. William Ernest Henley wrote this title poem in 1875
3. This movie was based on Playing The Enemy by John Carlin
4. The movie was previously entitled The Human Factor
5. Morgan Freeman sucks at the Madiba jive.
I read with much interest. Good read, as always!
I feel, however, that until we as South Africans can raise our own capital or budget, we aren't yet in a position to dictate who should be cast as who. I mean, ideally, we would tell our own stories, our way.
From a financial point of view, big names attract investors. If they are going to put money on the table, they want to be more confident that their investment will come back. Unfortunately, but true: they are the HAVEs, we are the HAVE-NOTs.
Maybe if our own local billionaires would help out, then maybe we could be closer to the ideal. That industry seems like a tough nut to crack - I could be wrong...
Big-ups on a good article though!
I feel you H. What irritates me the most is how people believe that this movie depicts the actual person that Mandela was/is without even doing their homework! sure its good for Clint and Morgan's cv's but is it really good for us? don't think so, the Mandela story that I know goes a long way beyond rugby and that is what I want to see, if someone can be successful at that even.
Nice article though girl, keep it up.
I totally agree!!!! That movie was as limp as Morgan Freemans left hand yo!!
This is a article is a good read. Enjoyed it. Thank you! fuck Hollywood, why aren't we making movies out of our own stories?
Ouch, ouch and ouch... So one didn't like Invictus then LOL. As always a good read and article.