Invictus
DVD | Blu-ray
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman
Warner Home Video
Release date: May 19, 2010

A South African newspaper’s heading read “he won the election, now can he lead a country?” This unhopeful question is referring to Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman), who in 1994 was elected the first black President of an apartheid stricken South Africa. After emerging 27 years from prison for political upheaval, Mr. Mandela had no inclinations to seek revenge on the white Afrikaners who placed the cuffs on him. Instead he disarmed any such thought, and the film, entitled Invictus — after an 1875 poem by British writer William Earnest Henley — is attracted to this passive stance which had, at its focal point, the sport of rugby.

Rugby is a primitive sport that glorifies brutality. A character in the film refers to it as a hooligans’ game. A bunch of ferocious men never hesitate to jolt another’s anatomy, leaving the victim writhing in pain on a field of grass that resembles man’s outer state; dirty, muddy, torn and worn. Each team interlocks with the other trying to move the opposition out of place so one team can snatch the ball up and progress it up-field. Despite the over-populated yelling crowd and the groans of the rugby players when their flesh smacks one another, communication is still tried amongst each team with hope of keeping order amongst each other. This does not sound so much like sport. Rather, it has characteristics that resemble wars, battles, and even apartheids (split teams).