A Movie About Visionary Leadership

INVICTUS

A still from INVICTUS

A movie, well featured in the current Oscar nominations, that may be of special interest to the Edmund Rice Network, is INVICTUS. The title, drawn from a poem about being the master of one’s fate, means ‘unconquerable’. On one level, the story is about a national rugby team that won the World Cup, steeled by the backing of an entire nation, united against all odds by charismatic leadership – the nation being the new South Africa and the charisma being that of Nelson Mandela. On another level, it is about Mandela’s own unconquerable spirit, shown in his ability to forgive and to act generously towards his former oppressors.

The story is well told and the script sparse and largely understated. Nelson Mandela, newly released after nearly three decades of imprisonment by the apartheid regime, arrives for his first day in the President’s Office. The atmosphere is tense, with staff expecting to lose their jobs. But he is not bent on revenge; his focus is on nation-building, and he wants everyone open to this to be on board with him. From this office scene, the picture widens to the whole country and its significant minority of skilled and formerly-powerful white Afrikaners. And it is their beloved ritual of rugby that the President grasps as a way to their soul.

Though the cameras and mikes spend a fair bit of screen-time capturing the thuds and thumps of the rugby-field, the movie is not about thugby. Essentially it is a cameo of visionary leadership, about inspired conviction that can risk standing against popular opinion, and about the subtle and sensitive role of designated leaders within a democracy, understood in a dynamic rather than a simplistic way. It is also about a leader’s instinctive understanding of the power of symbolism and ritual, and also of the incalculable value of the personal touch.

A telling sub-plot traces the emotional journey of the security guards surrounding Mandela. When his new team asks for reinforcement, he send them some of the old guard, and the merging of the two worldviews as they try to relate and work together, overcoming their assumptions about each other, mirrors what has had to happen in countless spheres of this nation’s most recent chapter of history.

There are some subtle touches, like the portrayal of the after-hours loneliness of Mandela, the representation of the role of women in the new order of things, and the shifting role of a domestic worker in the white family whose life the movie tracks as a commentary on the macro-movement around them.

Dealing with the theme of overcoming evil with good / smothering prejudice with magnanimity / transforming littleness with greatness, director Clint Eastwood is remarkably successful in avoiding sentimental cliché while nevertheless touching the heart and tugging the tears. Only in the specially-written songs is there a lapse into the indulgent and the heavy-handed. For a South African viewer, there is some stereotyping and oversimplification; but it is used to underline, not to undermine, the truth.

The values this movie dramatizes – notably inclusion, interconnectedness, thinking bigger, and generosity – renonate strongly with the ERN’s spirituality. INVICTUS could prove a valuable teaching tool in ERN schools and an enjoyable discussion-prompter for all kinds of groups within the Edmund Rice community.

Michael Burke cfc

editor

INVICTUS, released late in 2009, stars Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as the rugby captain, and is directed by Clint Eastwood. Duration: 133 minutes.