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Morgan Freeman is just the latest in a line of distinguished actors to play a famous person on screen.
Sometimes, as with Philip Seymour Hoffman and "Capote," it takes a while for the actor to disappear into the character. In other instances, as with Jamie Foxx in "Ray" or Helen Mirren in "The Queen," the magic act is instantaneous.
With "Invictus," Freeman belongs in that second category. From the moment he appears, he is Nelson Mandela. His hair, the cadence of his accented English, his bearing, his gentlemanly manner (and even his doctored teeth) appear spot-on.
The 72-year-old actor reunites with director Clint Eastwood for the true story of how the newly elected president of South Africa tried to unite the nation through rugby. Here, it wasn't just an underdog rugby team called the Springboks but the fact that, for many, the nearly all-white squad represented South Africa's racist past.
- Starring: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon.
- Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language.
- Web site: invictusmovie.warnerbros.com/
Members of Steeler Nation would have no quarrel with Mandela's contention that sport has the power to change the world.
"It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people, in a way that little else does," he has said.
On Mandela's first day in office, a newspaper headline asks, "He can win an election but can he run a country?" The leader himself says it's a legitimate question and, to the astonishment of some staffers, decides to expend some political capital on rugby.
It's not because he is a sports fan but because he believes that the Springboks, once a symbol of white supremacist rule, can unite the races. Instead of stripping the team of its name, colors and emblem -- moves that would grant sweet revenge for blacks but alienate white Afrikaners -- Mandela proposes compassion and generosity.
He needs to use every brick possible to build a nation and that's why he reaches out to Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), captain of the rugby team, and follows the Cinderella story of the 1995 World Cup.
I know virtually nothing about rugby, other than shirts and scrums, and the screenplay by Anthony Peckham provides only a cursory primer.
This is the poem, with original spellings, that inspired the name of the Clint Eastwood movie about Nelson Mandela:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconnquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
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.
-- William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)
A little more background would have been helpful but just as "The Blind Side" wasn't about football, this isn't about rugby. It's about remarkable forgiveness, how sports can make us colorblind and the healing power and joy of millions huddled around radios and TVs or in stadiums cheering for the same team.
That it's based on a real story, documented in John Carlin's book "Playing the Enemy," simply adds to its richness. The movie's title comes from a Victorian-era poem called "Invictus.".
Eastwood, who shot "Invictus" in and near Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa, directs with eloquent simplicity. The story needs no embroidery and he manages to convey, with efficiency, Mandela's separation from his wife, Winnie, and the way some black citizens are both invisible and members of a white household.
Damon has the compact, muscular build of an athlete and, to the untrained eye, looks like a rugby player, although not a bruiser. Eastwood and Freeman both walked away from "Million Dollar Baby" with Oscars -- for best picture and supporting actor, respectively -- and they make a winning team.
With a combined age of 151, they defy Hollywood's infatuation with youth. With age, it turns out, comes both wisdom and spirited holiday entertainment.
Correction/Clarification: (Published Dec. 14, 2009) The poem "Invictus" was written by William Ernest Henley. His last name was misspelled beneath his poem in this article as originally published Dec. 11, 2009.
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