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Invictus

Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon

Have you ever wondered why fundamentalist Christians get all worked up about homosexual marriage, but are as quite as a church mouse when it comes to divorce? Their Lord and Savior has a lot to say about divorce, but not a peep about homosexuality? What about adultery? I guarantee you that divorce and adultery are a bigger threat to the institution of marriage than Adam and Steve picking out China patterns. You would think that attending a place of worship would actually lessen these two. Nope, the church is not that shining city on the hill, at least not in this culture. With 54 percent of marriages ending in divorce and well over 60 percent of men and up to 40 percent of women greasing the sheets with someone not wearing a matching wedding ring, why go after the gays? Especially when they only represent between 4 and 10 percent of the population? If I was going to have a Defense of Marriage Act, I would be defending that institution against the likes of John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, David Vitter, and John Ensign.

The answer lies in the same reason that abortion has become such a bailiwick for the religious right, even though the Bible has zero, zip, nothing to say about the matter in a straight forward manner. Especially puzzling given that there is plenty of evidence that this is something Jesus would have been confronted by. If you go after that which really affects your congregation and allies, you are going to divide your forces. Homosexuals either are not attending your house of worship, or are in the closet out of shame or guilt. Abortions are always very private and painful decisions, something one keeps to themselves. Very few women, especially given their second class status, are going to speak up in a public forum that risks alienating family and friends. There are safe targets around which to rally your congregation, a common enemy. Us against them. We are the good and those outside the tent are the evil ones. It is a tactic coaches, talking heads and rulers have used for years. Create an enemy, real or imaginary, hype them up, and let fear mold your people into one solitary unit with a purpose.

But what do you do if you find yourself the leader of two groups of people that have hated each other for decades, if for generations each group has been told that the greatest threat is your fellow countryman? That is the position Nelson Mandela found himself in when he became President of South Africa in 1994. In fact, many of his followers thought he should have gone after the white South African minority that oppressed the majority for so long. It would have been understandable. If anyone had a reason to seek revenge it was Mandela. He had spent the last twenty-seven years of his life in prison, most of it performing hard labor in a limestone quarry. He was given less food than the white prisoners and fewer privileges, got only one letter and one visitor every six months, and even that solitary letter was often almost unreadable due to the prison censors. There were plots to kill him. When he became popular among his fellow political prisoners, authorities moved him to an even remoter location to stop what they labeled "Mandela University." Your marriage crumbled. Your children grew up without a father. You carry into your head the bloodshed and violence done to friends, neighbors and fellow black South Africans. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, it is a principle that anyone would agree with.

Instead, Nelson Mandela sought to bring the country together. With so much bad blood and anger just under the surface, how does one do that? Mandela found the answer in sports, rugby to be specific. White South Africans had always taken pride in their national team, the Springboks. Blacks, on the other hand, saw them as symbol of their oppression. To ask a black South African to root for the hated Springboks was like asking a Red Sox fan to don Yankees' pin-stripes. Increase the hatred tenfold and that is exactly what Nelson Mandela asked. South Africa was asked to host the month long, sixteen team international competition in 1995, with 32 games to be played across the country. Mandela began to push national pride and urged all of his countrymen to support their team. On the field, the Springboks played like they were on fire, winning all their games to advance to the finals against New Zealand All Blacks. No host country in the history of the Rugby World Cup had ever won the tournament. Mandela showed up at Johannesburg's Ellis Park, to everybody's shock, wearing a Springbok jersey with the number 6, of the Afrikaner captain, Francois Pienaar, on the back of it. What South Africans across the nation witnessed was an epic battle that ended in a 9-9 tie to force an overtime. Blacks and whites across the small nation found themselves rooting for a common cause, something they both could support. Their team was on the verge of defeating the heavily favored New Zealand squad. What happened next has been labeled one of the greatest moments in international sports. (New Zealand players would later charge that the game was as close as it was because a mysterious waitress named "Suzie" had deliberately poisoned their water supply during the week leading up to the game. There is no proof of this allegation.)

Mandela's five years in office were ones of reconciliation, of bringing two groups with a history of violence together. It is right that Morgan Freeman should hopefully win his first Best Actor Academy Award for playing him. Freeman is a national treasure. Delighting audiences in films like Driving Miss Daisy, Unforgiven, Seven, The Shawshank Redemption, and Million Dollar Baby, it seemed almost natural for him to play God in Bruce Almighty or the President of the United States in Deep Impact. His narration helped turn a documentary, March of the Penguins, that many in its home country, France, considered a joke, into one of the highest grossing documentaries in this country ever. He has a gravitas to him that cannot help but make you like him. The same can be said of Matt Damon who plays team captain Pienaar. Clint Eastwood helps his old friend out behind the camera by again proving that he is one of the best directors in Hollywood. (See if you can spot Eastwood's son, Scott, in the film.) This film should be nominated for several awards and lets hope Freeman can come home with the big one. I think that is something that can unite this country.

Verdict: Oscar Material