How you view "Invictus" will be shaped by how you view the struggle for a free South Africa.


Despite the regal performance by Morgan Freeman, it may be difficult for those who fought for a South Africa to see the narrative presented by "Invictus" as anything other than a diversion from the true gravity of this history.


The issues that confronted Nelson Mandela as the nation's first Black president, and that still confront the Black-ruled nation in its infancy, are enormous, far bigger than the game of rugby that the film highlights. And, many believe, those struggles stem from the fact that while Mandela and the African National Congress did take over political control of the country, they did not seize and control the wealth of the country for the benefit of its impoverished Black majority. (As a reminder, a White South African businessman interviewed during the global financial meltdown during the past year reassured a TV reporter of this very fact, in a surprisingly candid way.)


On the other hand, in this year of Michael Jackson, "Invictus" could be seen as the "We Are the World" interpretation of this era of South Africa, as it emerged from decades of the genocidal rule of apartheid. Though a formerly imprisoned freedom fighter, Mandela, as one of his first acts as president, boosts the struggling national rugby team, beloved by the White minority but seen as a vestige of apartheid by the country's Blacks. Mandela thinks the team is a way to heal the nation's racial rift. To the consternation of his chief adviser, he seems more concerned with placating Whites and demonstrating to them that Blacks, with their new political power, won't be as merciless to Whites as Whites had been to them.


So "Invictus" plays out on an emotional field of simple prejudice, where Blacks and Whites of South Africa can be viewed as equally culpable for what transpires in their country. Blacks, just months out of a system of separation of the races that meant death, imprisonment, pass laws, poverty wages and political disenfranchisement, must embrace what they consider a symbol of hate. Mandela's own Black security guards must accept working with White police officers who, no doubt, had participated in beatings and assassinations. On the other hand, it is not clear that Whites must accept anything different about the rugby team but, still, many must accept Black state rule. There are boos in the stadium when Mandela strides out of the tunnel to greet the masses.


The film's title is taken from a famous poem by British writer William Ernest Henley, who was left disabled after about with tuberculosis of the bone. He wrote:


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Though Mandela may have gained spiritual sustenance from these words, the film does not allow us to witness this transofrmation or much else in his personal life that might give his character or actions the depth to match the gravity of the times. His 27 years in prison on Robbins Island are only hinted at, just as the reality of apartheid is only hinted at. �Invictus� rolls out on a field that seems to look forward but is rendered vapid because it steadily ignores the past and vestiges of that past.

Links:
An ANC Report on Working Conditions under Apartheid

A United Nations Apartheid Timeline

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