MUBI

Title: Invictus
Year: 2009
Country: USA
Language: English, Afrikaans
Genre: Biography, Drama, Sport
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writers: Anthony Peckham, John Carlin
Cast:
Morgan Freeman
Matt Damon
Tony Kgoroge
Patrick Mofokeng
Matt Stern
Julian Lewis Jones
Adjoa Andoh
Marguerite Wheatley
Leleti Khumalo
Rating: 6/10

The truth of why I didn’t watch this film until now is that politics and sport are literally the two things attract me least, nevertheless after a second thought, I would like to give Clint Eastwood another chance, anyway, how worse it could be?

So, the after effect is that it does make me apathetic in spite of the fact that technically speaking, this time Clint Eastwood may not deserve a standing ovation, but actually he did a decent job to strive for a lesser poignant affectation in viewing of the vast backdrop story of a world-famous ex-president of South Africa.

One thing I do enjoy in this film is the cinematography, reminds me of MYSTIC RIVER (2003) and MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004), my favorite films of Mr. Eastwood (thanks to the same DP Tom Stern). The scene where the plane flied over the stadium is the eureka moment for me, otherwise I must admit that I have seen better.

The two Oscar-nominated leads Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon are surely watchable but way overrated in my own opinion, especially the latter, Matt is physically not a rugby player no matter how hard he tries, also his character is in lack of a deeper excavation. As for old Morgan, his imitation of Mandela is worthy of some compliments but does not make my top 5 list of 2009.

The biography genre usually is Clint’s masterpiece, the upcoming biopic of J. Edger has raised my expectation to an upmost peak (finger crossed for Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts, Armie Hammer and Judi Dench). Hope it will get Mr. Eastwood another culmination as personally I show more respect towards those late bloomers.

Nelson Mandela mungkin adalah salah satu tokoh yang paling banyak berpengaruh dan dihormati, tidak hanya di negaranya sendiri, Afrika Selatan, melainkan juga bagi seluruh masyarakat dunia. Ini, tentu saja, karena peranan dirinya yang terus berjuang untuk hak-hak persamaan warga kulit hitam di Afrika Selatan, sekaligus menghapuskan rasa benci terhadap warga kulit putih dari diri warga pribumi di negara tersebut.

Invictus, yang sebelumnya diberi judul The Human Factor, mungkin adalah film yang dapat menggambarkan sekelumit perjuangan Mandela dalam memulai untuk menanamkan berbagai prinsip asas persamaan bagi warga kulit hitam dan kulit putih. Dan hal itu ia mulai bukan dari wilayah dimana ia akan mendapatkan dukungan sepenuhnya.

Diangkat dari sebuah buku biografi berjudul Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation karya John Carlin, film ini mengisahkan mengenai sebuah pertandingan bersejarah yang terjadi pada 1995 Rugby World Cup yang berlangsung di Afrika Selatan. Judul Invictus sendiri diambil dari bahasa Latin yang berarti tak terkalahkan, yang juga merupakan judul sebuah puisi favorit Nelson Mandela, karya William Ernest Hanley.

Pertandingan tersebut menjadi bersejarah karena saat itu, Nelson Mandela (Freeman) baru saja dilepaskan dari penjara dan terpilih sebagai Presiden Afrika Selatan, dimana warga kulit hitam akhirnya dapat memberikan suara mereka untuk pertama kalinya. Walau begitu, politik pemisahan kasta atas perbedaan warna kulit (apartheid) masih terus berlangsung. Hal inilah yang menjadi perhatian utama Mandela dalam masa kekuasaan awalnya, untuk menyamakan derajat warga kulit hitam dengan kulit putih, namun tetap menghormati warga kulit putih yang selama ini dinilai telah menindas warga kulit hitam.

Di tempat lain, klub rugby nasional Afrika Selatan, Springboks, baru saja mengalami kekalahan mereka. Tim ini sendiri tidak memiliki dukungan dari warga Afrika Selatan karena dianggap masih melakukan politik apartheid dan lebih mengutamakan pemain berkulit putih.

Berhasil mendapatkan perhatian Mandela, yang menganggap bahwa dengan merubah cara pandang masyarakat Afrika Selatan terhadap Springboks dapat menjadi batu loncatan dalam misinya menerapkan asas persamaan, Springboks, di bawah kepemimpinan kapten tim mereka, Francois Pienaar (Damon), Springboks berlatih keras agar dapat masuk kedalam kejuaraan dunia tersebut. Hasilnya, bukan saja Springboks mampu menunjukkan keunggulan mereka, namun juga berhasil merubah cara pandang masyarakat Afrika Selatan dan memperkecil ruang perbedaan antara warga kulit hitam dengan warga kulit putih.

Dari sisi tema cerita, Invictus mungkin akan menjadi sebuah film bertema olahraga reguler jika tidak dikelola oleh tangan dingin seorang Clint Eastwood. Di tangan Eastwood, Invictus secara mengagumkan berhasil mereka ulang pertandingan bersejarang antara tim nasional rugby Afrika Selatan dengan tim nasional rugby Selandia Baru, sekaligus menangkap esensi dari perbedaan dan jurang yang secara perlahan terhapus antara warga kulit hitam dengan warga kulit putih.

Eastwood juga secara pintar menyelipkan berbagai “wejangan” hidup ala Mandela di film ini, sehingga Invictus bukan hanya menjadi sekedar sebuah tontonan pemberi inspirasi, namun dapat memberikan pembelajaran tersendiri bagi para penontonnya.

Keberhasilan ini tentu saja sangat terbantu dengan keberhasilan seorang Morgan Freeman dalam memerankan tokoh Nelson Mandela. Freeman memang seperti terlahir untuk memerankan sosok Mandela yang sangat kharismatis itu. Dan tidak salah pula jika Mandela-lah orang yang menunjuk langsung Freeman untuk memerankan dirinya. Selain Freeman, aktor Matt Damon juga patut diberikan pujian penuh atas keberhasilannya memerankan Francois Pienaar. Damon, yang dikabarkan harus menurunkan berat badannya dan berlatih keras untuk mendapatkan fisik yang sempurna, berhasil menunjukkan kemampuannya sebagai kapten tim yang berperan sebagai pemimpin, penyemangat sekaligus nyama utama dari sebuah tim.

Dalam sebuah film seperti Invictus, yang tema utamanya mungkin telah dibuat ratusan kali oleh Hollywood, kunci utama agar penonton masih dapat menikmatinya adalah kharisma yang ditampilkan di dalam film tersebut. Baik dari kharisma para pemain yang berperan di dalam film tersebut, kharisma cerita yang ditawarkan hingga kharisma film secara keseluruhan yang berhasil ditampilkan oleh sang sutradara.

Untuk Invictus, Clint Eastwood secara berhasil mengoptimalkan setiap sisi pendukung film ini sehingga menghasilkan sebuah film bertema olahraga yang sangat memorable dan akan tetap berada di ingatan para penontonnya, bahkan jauh ketika mereka telah selesai menyaksikannya.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

An inspiring and remarkable story. A sloppy lazy lackluster obvious film. The ho-hum dialogue and over-used and manipulative and sappy music alone qualify this film as trivial horse shit. Remember the terrible lines delivered by the terrible actor playing the priest in Eastwood’s Gran Torino last year? Take that, and times it by 50 and you’ve got Invictus. There is no direction of non-leads. The writing and scene-to-scene structure is jaw-droppingly laughable. Camera placement and editing choices are so fundamentally traditional and obvious. It seems that Eastwood phoned most of this in and focused on the Mandela character and nothing more.

This film was a boring and sappy disappointment from a filmmaker I generally love. I’m especially biased when it comes to Clint Eastwood and always try to give him the benefit of the doubt, but after seeing Gran Torino and this I’m pretty convinced that his work is on a downward spiral. What really bothers me about this movie, is all the squandered potential. What could’ve been an inspiring and layered film is a generic and hokey sports movie.
I went into this film wanting to learn more about Nelson Mandela as a man and his achievements. I didn’t expect him to be written as a one-dimensional selfless saint who walks around smiling and spreading goodness like a Care Bear. I’m not saying Mandela isn’t one of the greatest people in history, and he’s certainly recognized as such, but he simply isn’t human in this film. There are no layers, there’s no complexity and this isn’t the only character in the film that has this issue. Every single character does. Matt Damon’s character, Pienaar, has the exact same issue, there’s no human there. I actually shouldn’t even be calling them characters because they’re not. They’re empty, manipulative protagonists that suit the cliched needs of the story. Pienaar is a blank slate that occasionally delivers exhausting motivational speeches to his team throughout the movie, and frankly, I’ve heard far too many of those. I really didn’t want to have to sit through Remember the Titans again.
The script is terrible. Every single scene is a piece of sappy manipulation that could be predicted a mile away. I’m okay with inspirational, formulaic filmmaking when it’s involving, but I didn’t care about anything in this movie because it developed no involvement. There were no characters, no conflict, endless pep-talks and a hell of a lot of cheesy music.
The last half hour of the film is when I felt the most bored, I know absolutely nothing about rugby, and maybe that’s my own fault. Although, I think a film has a bit of an obligation to graze over the rules of rugby when it spends the last half-hour on a game. I guess it doesn’t really matter that much because half of that is spent on shots of over-excited, overly-happy families huddled around television sets and slow motion shots of the crowd cheering but I would’ve appreciated a little bit of insight.
Those are all the things I disliked about the film, but I honestly did not hate it. Although the writing of the characters Freeman and Damon portrayed was very poor, they really did the best that they could with that material. The cinematography, although somewhat lifeless, is well-composed overall and there are a few memorable images that really hit home for me. There are a couple scenes that took me into the experience for a moment(although I quickly fell back out shortly after), and the Clint Eastwood’s direction is very finely-tuned and is without a doubt exceedingly skilled.

Freeman is always inspirational. Damon has a non-showy role here that supports the story simply and honestly. I enjoyed the purposeful and occasionally humorous roles of the four main security officers, two black and two white (Tony Kgoroge, Patrick Mofokeng, Matt Stern, Julian Lewis Jones), who were a microcosm for the racial mistrust that South Africa had to overcome. If you are more familiar with this recent history and rugby as a sport, you probably will not get lost in the time line. I did a couple times because the only location/date label that appears on screen was at the beginning when Mandela is released from prison. Otherwise, the plot skips pretty quickly through Mandela’s term as president and the South African rugby team advancing to the World Cup. The plot jumps a year or two ahead in time without warning a couple times. Being American I also didn’t understand many of the rules of rugby, but I still picked up the important things fairly rapidly. The English poem that this movie gets it’s title from, a favorite of Mandela’s from his years in prison, is used subtly and not as a big sports movie cliche speech to inspire the team when they are struggling in the game before getting the win. The closing lines of the poem especially contain a beautiful sentiment, “I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul. / I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.”

Invictus is flat, lathargic, a paint-by-numbers inspirational film. The biggest fault is Clint Eastwood’s totally uncreative approach. So much of it feels canned, like a commercial project distilled into stupidity. Also, integral elements that should be in our periphery are completely invisible, say for instance, the Springboks head coach? Where the hell was that guy in all of Mandela’s socio-political mastery? In addition to these faults, there is lazy cinematography and some especially lousy editing, particularly in the final rugby match. It’s a shame Freeman and Damon wasted such stellar performances. But hey, Clint’s still my boy.