A Movie Review...Better Late than Never!

While my parents were visiting a couple of weeks ago for my son’s High School graduation, we took the time one evening to watch “Invictus”, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon .

I felt it gave you a really good background as to what the politics and the mood of the country of South Africa might have been at the time when Nelson Mandela had become President of the country. I also felt that he really loved his country more than the power of his office of President. That is a rare quality in a politician.

Morgan Freeman was amazing in this part.  He really is one of the greatest actors of our time.  Matt Damon was also very good and I thought he did fine on the South African accent.  The cinematography and script showed the disparity between the different races and it was drastic! I guess I can credit my parents for helping me learn at an early age that race doesn’t matter, but who you are inside and what you work for is what is important. Because of being raised this way, I still really have a hard time understanding the reasoning behind the inequalities around the world in the name of race.

I do wish that the movie would have explained a little better about the game of Rugby. If you go in knowing practically nothing about the game, you leave with the same amount of knowledge. Most “sport” type movies do help you understand the basics of the game they are dealing with as the movie progresses, and this one did not. I do think that this is the toughest game out there. It is rougher that American football and they play it without all the padding. They are REAL men that play this!!!

I do understand that it is not the game that was important, but the need for Mandela to unite the Country behind a common cause, but it would have been fun to learn a little of how the game works. I did not really understand the title either until I found out that it came from a poem that I later found and it is a very inspirational poem. It is by William Ernst Henley:

Invictus


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.

What a great “creed” to live by.
Check out the movie if you haven’t already.