Clint Eastwood’s Invictus will make Kiwis sick

Clint Eastwood’s tribute to Nelson Mandela and the new South Africa is as dramatic and dynamic as a Nobel prize acceptance speech, writes Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian.

Moment of triumph … Morgan Freeman as Mandela Photograph: Keith Bernstein

The title is that of WE Henley’s inspirational poem from 1875, about one’s head being bloody but unbowed, and being the captain of one’s soul: a kind of Victorian My Way. Nelson Mandela kept a copy of the poem on him while in prison to keep his spirits up, and in this glassy-eyed movie version of the 1995 Rugby World Cup campaign – in which President Mandela sensationally backed the Springboks, as a brilliant gesture of reconciliation with white South Africans generally – the president gives a copy to the rugby captain François Pienaar. Well, if Henley’s poem is good enough for Nelson Mandela, it’s good enough for the rest of us, but I can’t help finding it a stiff, tightly-buttoned piece of ­writing, appropriate for this massively inert ­picture, which looks like a heritage-tourism video.

via Invictus | Film review | Film | The Guardian.

But for New Zealanders, even those as far away geographically and international in outlook as your correspondent, Clint Eastwood’s film is worse than that. Much, much worse. For no New Zealander or Kiwi over the age of say, 4, will have forgotten that the principle reason the Springboks triumphed over the All Blacks that day was not:

1) Because the Springboks, rallying together in a spirit of multi-culturalism, played the best game of rugby in their lives…

2) Because Nelson Mandela decided to embrace a sport that had previously been the preserve of Afrikaaners (white South Africans of Dutch descent)…

3) Uplifting music played on the soundtrack of life…

…Oh no. They won because the All Blacks awoke that fateful morning, incapacitated by a mysterious case of food poisoning. But this is Hollywood, and Eastwood & co obviously chose not to let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Any more than, for example, the producers of U-571, a film starring Harvey Keitel which purported that the Americans, not the Brits, cracked German radar codes. But I digress.

Mitch Hall, a young Kiwi writer friend of mine living in New York, addresses the subject of Invictus thus:

“1) Is the rugby action any good? and 2) Does Eastwood make any mention of a certain alleged food poisoning incident? To answer the first question – not one of the kick-offs depicted at the tournament appear to make it over the 10 metre line, and none of the players seem to have any sort of sporting personality, let alone much physical resemblance to the actual players. A reasonable amount of attention is focused on Jonah Lomu, including actual footage of that try when, after storming around, past, and through several England players, Lomu just runs completely over the top of the hapless Mike Catt. New Zealanders will never get sick of watching that replay as long as they live.

Quite. Clint Eastwood’s cinematic travesty however, we’ll probably give a wide swerve. (Check out Mitch’s blog incidentally, he’s worth a read.) Nor does the film make any mention of the controversy in New Zealand caused by sporting contact with Apartheid South Africa. In New Zealand, where rugby is virtually a religion, to tour or not to tour South Africa, pre-1989, divided a nation. Dirty Harry’s film will however unite it – in disdain.