Taking It Home: Invictus

("Taking It Home" is an alternative review style in which I share my thoughts on a movie's themes and how they may relate to my life, while focusing less on the acting, writing, technical aspects, or even plot of the film. It's a collection of the ideas I took home, "because the movie experience shouldn't end in the theater".)

More influential than any stump speech a politician could make... 

While watching Clint Eastwood's Invictus I was reminded of a little-seen documentary a few years ago about the space race. The astronauts interviewed in In the Shadow of the Moon gave fascinating and inspiring accounts of their experience with the outer limits, but the most lasting impression I have is their description of what was happening back here on Earth. As we Americans are reminded every summer, after years of competing with the Soviets to get a man on the Moon, the United States reached the finish line first, on July 20, 1969. We would go on to dominate space exploration for the next generation and ultimately to the present day.

But what wasn't clear to me until In the Shadow of the Moon, and what was reinforced by Invictus, is just how much collective pride a population can gain from what is, on the surface, a meaningless competition. Despite the social and political turmoil of 1969, for example, the United States experienced a brief period of pure, unadulterated joy because we beat the Soviets at a massive global game (more interestingly, according to the film, this American achievement was celebrated around the globe, and goodwill toward the United States peaked at a level not reached again until 9/12/01). The triumph of the South African National Rugby Team might pale in comparison on a global scale, but Invictus still portrays the Springboks' 1995 World Cup victory as an event almost as important as the moon landing - and ultimately more important than the U.S. Men's Hockey Team's 1980 "Miracle on Ice" (most recently revisited in 2004's Miracle).

You may be thinking, "Come on, sports are unimportant in the grand scheme of things and a distracting waste of time and money that could spend on much more important issues!". Tell that to Nelson Mandela (in fact many of his advisors did, as we see in the film). To take nothing away from Mandela's achievement as a black man being elected president in a racially segregated country after half a lifetime in prison, the Boks' World Cup victory was just as important to his political success - even more so, if I may be so bold.

In reviewing the documentary Crude recently, I wrote, "Great leaders, like Fajardo, understand that difficult problems can't be solved overnight, and they acknowledge that the failure to resolve a problem doesn't constitute a failure in addressing one. Sometimes it takes years, and sometimes you don't even see the end of the line, but that doesn't mean the effort doesn't make all the difference." 

This is essentially the same leadership philosophy practiced by Mandela (Morgan Freeman) in this story. He knew that his election would not heal the wounds between Afrikaners and blacks in a post-Apartheid society, and it wouldn't reduce crime or improve the economy, and it certainly wouldn't earn him the respect of millions of Afrikaners who loathed his politics. But he knew the people of South Africa, and he knew how to navigate across their cultural differences.

One of the things I love about sports - maybe the thing I love the most, actually - is that anyone from anywhere can support any team for any reason. Your age, ethnicity, religion, education, occupation, and gender don't matter in the slightest. Sports have the power to bring people together in times of tragedy, and too often the power to create tragedy, whether by overworking little kids on the way to becoming professionals, or simply causing riots and fights between fans. But on balance I see sports as an extremely positive universal of every culture - primarily because they can appeal so universally to an entire culture. Mandela knew this, and in hindsight it's surprising to me that so few of his advisor's didn't.

It's this power of universal appeal that really came through most powerfully for me in Invictus, most notably when the Springboks visited a group of township boys and taught them the game of rugby. Call it schmaltzy, call it heavy-handed, but that's how national pride develops at the grassroots level, and it was the most emotional scene in the film for me, much more so than even the team's championship victory.

I saw these boys transfer their love for one (Chester, the lone black player on the team) to a love for country, and a realization that they have a place in this world, that their lives are about more than what happens on their dusty streets. Although we didn't see the boys crowded around a TV like everyone else in the country, I imagined them beaming with pride on the day of the championship match, arguing and boasting about who actually touched team captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon). This self-identity translating to national pride is the same sentiment that moved me in Slumdog Millionaire, and the same one that moves me to a great degree for every Olympic Games, and for the FIFA World Cup (held in 2010, coincidentally, in South Africa).

I don't know how strong of a case I'm making for the cultural importance of sports, and I'll fully admit they are not important enough to warrant the multi-billion dollar industry they've come to represent in this country. But history has shown, from Jesse Owens in Berlin to the Springboks on their home stage, that these competitions have the potential to be much more than just a game.

What did you take home?