Posts Tagged ‘INVICTUS’

MANDELA: THE LONG WALK TO FREEDOM: 3 ½ STARS. “powerful performance from Idris Alba.”

Nelson Mandela, who passed away in December 2013 at the age of 95, lived enough life to fill many films.

Aspects of his life have been portrayed on big and small screens by everyone from Sidney Poitier to Morgan Freeman to Dennis Haysbert to Terrence Howard, in everything from the British satirical television show “Spitting Image” to a TV mini-series and the Oscar nominated “Invictus.”

“Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom,” starring Idris Alba, and adapted from Mandela’s autobiography of the same name, attempts to cover almost seven decades of his story.

Mandela wore many titles. Born into the Thembu royal family in rural South Africa we first see him as an adult in 1942 Johannesburg. He’s a lawyer in a country where a judge contemptuously refers to him as “boy.”

Through direct exposure to social injustice he becomes politicized and soon the young attorney is the public face of African resistance. “Why should we obey their laws?” he says of the white minority who run the country. “We don’t have a vote. They are having a party and we’re not invited.”

From street corner speechmaking and taking part in non-violent boycotts he soon rises to prominence in the African National Congress. From there, in retaliation for government brutality against black South Africans the ANC turned to radical activism, leading to the arrest and conviction of Mandela and several colleagues. Imprisoned for treason he spends the next twenty-seven years separated from his wife Winnie (Naomie Harris), his family and country but he never gives up hope.

In 1992, with the eyes of the world on South Africa, Mandela is released, having brokered a deal with President F.W. de Klerk (Gys de Villiers) to abolish apartheid and establish multiracial elections. In 1994 he was elected South Africa’s first black president.

The movie is a Coles Notes of Mandela’s storied life, adopting a greatest hits style of story telling. All the major highlights of his time are covered and as a quick history lesson it works well. It shows the scope, importance and influence of the man’s life, but the all-inclusive approach brings with it information overload. How do you wedge a life as big as Mandela’s into a two-hour-and-fifteen minute movie?

There’s a shorthand these kind of big biopics use. For instance, when Mandela meets Winnie for the first time he comments on how she is the first black social worker at a large hospital and adds that she is also the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. The two bits of unconnected info—expositional and declarative—fall into a classic style of story telling these sprawling movies use to convey a lot of information in as little time as possible but don’t sound authentic to the ear.

“Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom” feels old fashioned, like the kind of biography Richard Attenborough specialized in.

The movie may have been more effective if the filmmakers had chosen instead to examine one aspect of Mandela’s life. Recently “My Week With Marilyn” took seven days in the life of Marilyn Monroe and used the condensed time frame to really explore the actress’s character and the result was revelatory.

With a life as rich in detail as Mandela’s there are more than enough opportunities to dissect the story into interesting eras.

Having said that, “The Long Walk to Freedom” is an interesting movie. There’s beautiful South African music and scenery punctuated by ugly scenes of racism, a powerful performances from Alba and Harris who both bring passion and heat to their roles.

At the end of the sprawling story, however, it is Mandela’s legacy of love, forgiveness and reconciliation that makes the biggest impression.

INVICTUS: 3 STARS

After watching “Invictus” I’d vote for Morgan Freeman. He plays Nelson Mandela with an impressive mix of gravitas, intelligence and humanity, perfect for a mayor or even higher office, but just because I’d give him my vote doesn’t mean he’s made a good movie.

“Invictus,” Clint Eastwood’s thirty-first film as a director doesn’t feel as slap dash as “Gran Torino,” his exercise in first takes and weak performances from last year. It’s a more ambitious film, shot on location in South Africa, and featuring some flashy production design, but like his 2005 Oscar winner “Million Dollar Baby,” it is a human story set against a sports back drop. This isn’t a biography of Mandela or a study of race; it’s the story of the Springbok, a champion rugby team who became a unifying symbol of the new South Africa.

Freeman cuts an impressive figure as Mandela, capturing the man’s grace; unfortunately every line out of his mouth sounds like it should be engraved on an inspirational commemorative plate. It’s understandable to paint Mandela as a philosopher king, he is, after all one of the most impressive figures of our recent history, but according to “Invictus” he only speaks in platitudes. It doesn’t feel like a full portrait of the man, just an inspirational glimpse of a great man.

The other major character, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), captain of the Springboks, is similarly underdeveloped but made interesting by Damon’s performance. He’s becoming a great character actor who shows his versatility in roles as diverse as the bi-polar whistle blower in “The Informant” and the super spy character from the “Bourne” movies.

There is a good ninety minute movie hidden in the 133 minute running time. An underdeveloped subplot about Mandela’s strained relationship with his family doesn’t do much except slow the movie down and the important stuff—Mandela’s rise to power and the story of race reconciliation—is dispensed with in the sixty minutes, leaving us with over an hour to ramp up for the big game.

Despite drawing out the final game—it drags on for half an hour when a highlight reel would have sufficed—there are some very effective sequences. The bits of the film that work best are the small moments that don’t involve Mandela’s inspirational chestnuts. It’s strongest when the Springbok team go to the townships to teach the kids rugby or Pienaar sizes up Mandela’s old cell, using his arms to  measure the width of the tiny enclosure. These are powerful moments and give the movie much of its oomph.

“Invictus” (it’s Latin for “invincible” and the title of an 1875 poem Mandela used as inspiration when things got rough during his 27 years in prison) takes a real story and filters it through a typical sports movie set up—the World Cup game in South Africa is a microcosm of the larger issues of acceptance—but misses most of the true drama inherent in the story.