Invictus 打不倒的勇者

The director has turned out a stirring drama about South African leader Nelson Mandela, blending entertainment, social message and history lesson in a way that recalls such decades-old films as “The Story of Louis Pasteur,” “The Life of Emile Zola” and “Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet.” The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Eastwood, who will be 80 in 2010, understands the flow of narrative in a way younger directors might envy. Working with co-stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, he doesn't allow anything, especially splashy technique, to get in the way of simply telling a story.

The story he tells, based on a script by Anthony Peckham, is far from the ordinary great-man tale. It focuses on one particular moment in history when the newly elected Mandela, played by Freeman, tried something so brazen, so risky, that his closest advisers were not only against it, but considered it political suicide.

As detailed in journalist John Carlin's “Playing the Enemy,” the excellent book on which the screenplay is based, Mandela, in his usual “half-instinctive, half-calculating way,” came up with the notion of using sport in general and rugby in particular in a manner that no one had ever thought of before. He decided to use his country's most divisive symbol to unite South Africa's white population (fearful of being marginalized after Mandela replaced decades of apartheid government) with long-oppressed fellow countrymen.

“Invictus” opens with a 1990 motorcade driving a just-freed Mandela from his Robben Island prison. On one side of the road, black South Africans take time out from soccer to cheer loudly; on the other side, their white counterparts are playing rugby and listening as their coach says: “It's the terrorist Mandela. They let him out. This is the day our country went to the dogs.”

It's not just that different races played different games, it's that over the years the national rugby team, the green-and-gold-wearing Springboks, became so much the symbol of apartheid that during international competitions, South African blacks would cheer fiercely for whatever country the team was playing against.

It is one of the intriguing aspects of Freeman's nuanced portrayal that it reminds us that Mandela was hardly a young man, but age 71 when he was released after 27 years in prison, and even older when he became president four years later. Freeman's Mandela is a figure of dignity, even solemnity, but also someone whose faith in other people brought out the warmth in them and him.

1|2|Next Page>>

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email