At the Movies: Mandela, Mein Führer, The Man With No Name

Another week another new crop of movies at the theater. As the fall TV shows begin to go on hiatus till the end of the year, one needs solid movies to replace them. For the next few weeks, unless you can stand to watch A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, or Elf more than once a week, you’ll need some ideas for other things to watch. This week I have a recent history lesson, an alternative to a history lesson, and a lesson in honing your craft.

In the theater:

Invictus (directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon)

As red-blooded American’s, we are no strangers to the inspirational sports story. Right now in the theaters John Lee Hancock’s The Blind Side is pulling in more and more viewers. However Clint Eastwood has crafted an impressive complement, substituting rugby for football, and expanding the scale to include all of the nation of South Africa. Newly elected South African president Nelson Mandela (Freeman) sees his country teetering on shaky support due to the raw wounds left by apartheid. He helps to unite his country in their support behind the South African Rugby Team the” Springboks.”  Led by captain Francois Pienaar (Damon), the Springboks  make an improbable run to the finals to face the tough New Zealand “All Blacks” squad in the finals of the 1995 Rugby World Cup (which took place in South Africa).

Actors salivate for roles like this. Playing a role based on an international icon such as Mandela must mean a great deal to an actor like Morgan Freeman, who has very little left to prove in his superb acting career. After many years of failing to adapt Mandela’s autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom to the big screen, Freeman was able to secure the rights to John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. He brought in old friend Clint Eastwood, who directed him to his first Oscar win in Million Dollar Baby, to hold the reigns on this film. The result is well above average. Many biopic-related films tend toward the overly dramatic (like Ray or Walk the Line), and thankfully this film avoids such grandstanding. Freeman’s take on Mandela is understated and restrained. My only peeve with the performance, stems from Freeman’s adopted accent. His attempt at Mandela’s voice is well done, but it takes away from what he does best. The gravitas bound in Freeman’s voice is the stuff legends are made of. His calm even delivery is second only to maybe James Earl Jones. In a perfect world I would fashion some sort of recording to have Morgan Freeman read me a bedtime story every night. Just recalling the ending voice over in The Shawshank Redemption makes my eyes well up (“I hope the Pacific Ocean is as blue as it is in my dreams”). But this is not simply a movie about Mandela. It is the story of his success in united a divided country behind a sports team.

Probably the toughest sell on this film is its focus on rugby, a sport about which viewers likely know very little. A comparison is offered within the film: “Soccer is a game for gentleman played by hooligans; Rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentleman.” A minor error by the filmmakers here is a lack of explanation of the rules of the game. Only one actual rule is explained in the film: passes can only be made backwards or sideways, never forward. However piecing together simple concepts, at least in terms of  the sports’ scoring, is not too difficult, which shows an uncommon faith in the viewer. But perhaps my all of my rugby friends from college imparted knowledge that helped me out. From a sports fan’s point-of-view, I also feel that the final game is paced way too slowly. Eastwood has a history of pacing his films very slowly and deliberately, and this film is no exception. I found that for the final match this felt slightly flat. Especially given that the conclusion of the match is one you expect, I just wanted the match to move faster.

The overall film is a mild commentary on racial divides. Often films dealing with such issues will beat their viewers over the head with their political stance. Eastwood is aggressive with his film’s message, but he operates more with kid gloves, delivering the message evenly and quietly, which proves most effective. The symmetry in the opening and closing scenes alone is indicative of Eastwoood’s filmmaking prowess. His only misstep in undertones is the placement of a song by singer Jamie Cullum, which struck me in the theater as overly-sappy. In other his other films, Eastwood has relied on softer musical scoring. He is after all himself a composer, and seems to have an innate sense of how a film’s music can profoundly affect an film’s overall impact. He ended his last film Gran Torino with good song featuring Cullum, but this time it comes off as over-the-top.

The film is named Invictus, for the William Ernest Henley poem that Mandela used as inspiration to survive his 27 year prison sentence on Robben Island. This film is simply a demonstration of that inspiration, and how Mandela projected it to a country of 43 million through the success of the rugby team. And Eastwood gracefully conveys that through what was a truly enjoyable film.

On DVD:

Inglourious Basterds (directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, and Diane Kruger)

After a rousing South African history lesson, its definitely fitting to loose yourself in a little bit of stylized historical fiction. Maverick filmmaker Quentin Tarantino gives us a spaghetti western version of how World War II could have played out, and the result is brutal, exacting, and a delight to behold.

With a sense of not-so-subtle irony, this film is largely about the screening of a film itself. The plot follows two unrelated plots to assassinate Hitler and other high-ranking members of the Third Reich while they attend a the premiere of a war propaganda film. The first is employed by a vicious band of eight Jewish American soldiers, nicknamed “The Basterds”, who have cut a savage bloody path through France. They are led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Pitt), a Tennesse soldier descendant of the Apache. This group travels as civilians, and annihilate any German troops they encounter with start brutality, scalping their victims and carving swastikas into their foreheads . The second plot is by the film theater owner Shoshana Dreyfus (Laurent), a Jewish woman, who witnessed her entire family gunned down by Nazi soldiers. She is coerced into holding the film premiere at her theater, and decides she will trap the attendees inside and burn the theater to the ground.

Marketing for this film suggests that Brad Pitt is the unequivocal star, and only slightly moreso than its auteur helmer Tarantino. Pitt does a fine job, despite an unbearably thick backwater Southern accent. However the real star of this piece is that of the film’s antagonist, Colonel Hans Landa, aka “The Jew Hunter.” Landa is played with spectacular panache by German actor Christoph Walsh. The range of emotions displayed by Walsh is astonishing. He ranges from playful to cold-hearted, from serious to flippant, and shifts effortlessly back and forth. Walsh will undoubtedly be in the running for end-of-year accolades for his performance (He was already recognized as Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year).

As always with Tarantino films, this film is rich with fantastic dialogue. Tarantino has a knack for elevating normal conversation between characters to a level where tension is through the roof. The opening scene introduces us to Col. Landa, and watches him interrogate a French farmer occasionally discussing cows, milk, etc. and all the while completely disarming him psychologically and finding out exactly what he wants to know. Along with his masterful words Tarantino has included copious amounts of violence. He shows more restraint than in some previous films, but be warned there is more than a fair share of blood. But Tarantino’s zeal for good cinema comes through in every little detail. Even with a lengthy two-and-a-half hour running time, the film never lags. I could have watched these characters for hours more.

I wait with bated breath to see which genre Tarantino tackles next.

And one you may have missed:

Blood Work (directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Clint Eastwood, Anjelica Huston, Jeff Daniels)

So after those two powerhouse films, sometimes its good to take it down a notch. Fortunately one doesn’t have to look much further than Clint Eastwood’s body of work as a director. A two-time Oscar winner for Best Director, the cinema world seems to stand up and take notice every time he gets behind the camera. However Blood Work, the film he made just prior to Mystic River, managed to fly well under the radar back in 2002. Its nowhere near as flashy, gritty, or heavy as his more recent Oscar fare, but every now and then we need a film thats not so serious.

Retired FBI detective Terry McCaleb (Eastwood), forced out of the job after he suffers a massive heart attack on the job, is spurred to follow up on the investigation of a young woman’s murder, when he learns that she provided the actual heart he received in a recent transplant. Eastwood is no stranger to the role of detective, but McCaleb is no Harry Callahan. Whereas “Dirty Harry” was cocksure and irreverent, McCaleb is quietly confident and reserved. McCaleb is also a strong detective, due mostly to his determination and attention to detail. Overall this is a straight meat-and-potatoes detective story. Given the popularity of shows like Law & Order, and CSI, I am surprised that this film wasn’t more popular. Where those shows tend to ratchet up the drama to absurd level, this film operates with a steady pace of a metronome, as most Eastwood films do. He proves that you can highlight the detective work without wild, distracting plot twists.

Where the film falls flat are with its villain, and its two minor subplots. The actor who plays the serial killer is horribly miscast. Particularly in his scenes in the film’s final act, his performance is so unbounded that the film’s even keel pace and tone are derailed (and of course I can’t give away who the character is). Balancing the dry, unflappable Clint Eastwood requires a great deal of skill. I suppose we were all spoiled in one of my favorite films In The Line of Fire, where John Malkovich counterbalances Eastwood perfectly. Secondly in this film, I’m not sold on the McCaleb’s vulnerability. Much is made of his awareness of his new heart, but Eastwood doesn’t quite sell it convincingly for me. His characters are so often unstoppable; its hard to buy that he can allow something like a heart transplant to slow him down.

Blood Work is far from Eastwood’s finest film, but its appeal lies in its difference from a bold inspirational film featuring Nelson Mandela, or a sweeping, violent war movie for that matter. Its proof that a 72-year-old like Eastwood can still run circles around most guys in Hollywood today. And proof that a solid pace can outshine all the plot-twists, curveballs, and half-baked villains on which most crime thrillers rely. We may not see Eastwood in the leading man role for too much longer so we’ll have to savor movies like this.

Alex is a film enthusiast who has written online content for Card Player Magazine in Las Vegas, as well for his local newspaper The Outer Banks Sentinel in Nags Head, North Carolina. He is a 2004 graduate of Tulane University, with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications & Sociology with a minor in Film Studies. Email movie review suggestions, questions, or comments to him at alexb@duluthsuperiormagazine.com.