I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus is the title of the new movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, about the early days of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa. It is also a short poem written by William Ernest Henley which ends with these words,

"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."

Nelson Mandela kept  a copy of this poem written on a piece of paper with him while he was in prison. 

This movie tells the story of Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) when he was newly elected as the President of South Africa. He was struggling to find a way to make the minority whites feel included in the new South Africa. The country's national rugby team, the Springboks, were an icon and symbol of the old Apartheid regime. The whites loved the team. The blacks actually rooted for any team that played against the Springboks. The new government's Minister of Sport planned to disband the team. But Mandela had other ideas. He wanted to support the Springboks in the upcoming Rugby World Cup which was being held in South Africa. He approached the captain of the Springboks, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), with the idea that if the team could win the World Cup it could bring the country together.

This is Morgan Freeman's movie. Everyone else including Matt Damon is a bit player. One reason that I hate biopics is that I have trouble accepting an actor playing someone that is so familiar to me. But Morgan Freeman does as well as anyone could in becoming Mandela for the screen. And it doesn't hurt that Mandela is my hero. I love the guy. In one of the first scenes of Invictus, Mandela arrives at work on his first day as President to find the government workers, all whites, are packing up their offices and leaving. They expect that what actually happened at the DA's office in New Orleans, is going to happen here; they are all going to be fired and replaced by blacks. Instead, Mandela gathers the workers together and asks them to stay to help him and the country. Damon has a harder time making an impact with this role. His character is a stoic Afrikaner from rural South Africa. He is potentially the most interesting character in the movie, because he decides that he trusts Mandela and supports him. But we never get into Pienaar's head. He just seems to be a good guy who does the right thing. But as a result, Damon's character isn't that interesting. Damon is incredibly buff in this movie and looks great with his shirt off. There are a lot of locker room scenes.  But he is still really small compared to the real rugby-playing Pienaar who is 6'3" and 240 lbs. 

This yet another movie from the most productive director in Hollywood, 78-year-old Clint Eastwood. He really knows how to put together a movie. And Invictus is no different. Even though this is a "Mandela" film, it follows the playbook of many previous underdog sports movies like Hoosiers or We Are Marshall.  We see lots of scenes of the Springboks losing and losing, followed by scenes of hard training, inspirational motivation, and then redemption. Always, one of the characters, usually the coach is in need of personal redemption as well as the team. Here, that character is Mandela. Strangely, the coach of the Springboks is not even a character in the movie. The hard part with Invictus is that the sport is rugby which is totally unfamiliar to the American audience. Eastwood has decided to ignore that and just show the game without even trying to explain the rules. And he shows quite a bit of rugby including over 20 minutes of the World Cup final game.

The cast is very good, especially Freeman who is one of those actors who could read from the phonebook and make it interesting. Damon shows again that he can play anyone. He has obviously made a decision to take interesting character roles rather than just going for leading men. As a result, he is making some nice movies (The Informant!) as well as blockbusters like the Bourne and Ocean's Eleven series. 

The thing I hate most is that all biopics change well known facts for dramatic license. As a result, when Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison addresses the jury at the end of JFK, you might expect that he would be giving Garrison's actual speech since it was in the court transcripts. Ditto the speech given by Russell Crowe as John Nash accepting the Nobel Prize at the end of A Beautiful Mind. It isn't the speech that Nash actually gave. So you won't be surprised to find out that at the climax of Invictus, when Mandela gives the Springbok captain a copy of the poem just before the final of the Rugby World Cup, this didn't actually happen. In reality, Mandela gave Pienaar part of Theodore Roosevelt's, The Man In The Arena speech which was more appropriate to the occasion,

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

The most interesting subplot in Invictus involves Mandela's security detail which is made up of his own black guards as well as whites from the South African security service who used to arrest people like Mandela. The white guards are big rugby fans; the black guards not so much. Their story is a microcosm of South Africa today.  Invictus is really a fantasy movie because it implies that Mandela and rugby have produced a new united South Africa. The reality is not quite so clean and simple but it does make a nice movie.