As the first black President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, also known as Madiba from the ancestor family he comes from, could have boycotted the 1995 Rugby World Cup and asked others to do the same. Because the Springboks, as the national Ruby team is known, represented everything about white apartheid South Africa that non-white South Africans were opposed to. Instead, Mandela wore the South African Springbok rugby jersey, number 6, the team captain Francois Pienaar’s number, showing through action that forgiveness started with the Presidency. “Reconciliation starts here. Rainbow nation starts here. Forgiveness starts here. Forgiveness liberates the soul,” he would say as he, the team, and the country showed a World Cup global audience of more than one billion people that all colors of South Africa could make it work. Two-time Oscar winning director Clint Eastwood brings the story to the big screen in Invictus.

Invictus is the title of a poem by William Ernest Henly, one of Mandela’s favorites and one that kept him strong during times of uncertainty spent in prison:

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.

And the movie is adapted from John Carlin’s book by the same name. Carlin is a journalist and writer who interviewed Mandela for the Frontline piece The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela (1999). As a close friend from South Africa tells me, Mandela was released from prison on Robben Island, South Africa in 1990. The South African president at the time, F.W. de Klerk set the action in motion by lifting a ban on the African National Congress, previously banned from being a political party from 1960 to1990. That and Mandela’s release were a huge step in the direction of anti-apartheid. Mandela became president in 1994, only one year before South Africa would host the Rugby World Cup. Due to prior apartheid laws, South Africa would have been banned from competing in such events. “South Africans were hungry for the win,” as my friend says.

Invictus tells the story of how Mandela contacted Springbok captain Francois Pienaar and became involved in the Springbok games, because of its importance to South Africans and what a win would mean for the country at the time. Mandela could have allowed the National Sports Society to abolish the Springbok team colors and insignia in favor of the protea flower as well, and he could have asked his country to boycott all apartheid-era sports, entertainment, and cultural institutions in protest of how his apartheid countrymen had conducted themselves during the period but he didn’t. Nor did he show any animosity toward his country for his imprisonment. And that is the lesson the movie teaches us. Over and over again we hear speeches in the film, both politically and athletically charged that are more about moving forward than punishing the past. “Things are changing,” Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar says, “and we need to change too.”

Damon and Freeman do well with their accents with Damon having an edge. I just can’t get past Freeman’s patent voice pattern and distinctive Electric Company voice. South Africans may see the accent flaws more so than Americans but I think the story and sport for them will diminish any anxiety over accent. The film wants to be epic like Gandhi or a David Lean film but it stays small, which is okay because it keeps the film intimate even if at times scenes are sweeping in subject matter. Stadium scenes are perfectly done and I’m actually surprised Eastwood pulls it off because scenes like these take a ton of extras. Then again, he did it with convincing force in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, both from 2006. You even hear the same kind of sweeping emotional musical score heard in those two films, with the added bonus of African vocal group Overtone. Believe me, if your lip starts quivering in this film it’s because Eastwood is a master filmmaker and knows at the precise moment when to enter with the soppy score.

South Africa is much more photogenic than the film gives it credit for. I’m disappointed with the color of the celluloid stock, that the cinematographer didn’t convince Eastwood to saturate the film with color even if filters were necessary to achieve this. This is also a story of one moment in time seemingly trying to engulf decades of conflict, it’s not something easily done in two hours; nor can it fully be done by zeroing in on Mandela and Pienaar. For the most part it’s Mandela’s story though the script could improve with more background and insight into Pienaar’s character and upbringing. As if to say all things begin with Mandela’s election as President, that the story starts here. Hard to do. The story just seems so much more complicated than that and really seems more suited to someone like the late great Robert Altman. But don’t get me wrong. Eastwood is one of my favorite directors and at 74-years-old really knows how to craft a good film. 1992’s Unforgiven is one of my favorite films.   Invictus is close to being in my top ten of the year (with the caveat of course that Hollywood isn’t producing films like they used to). I’d give it two and half solid stars and reserve another half star for the emotional impact it had on me. It just made me feel three stars good, which is really good.

The other thing too is that you have to wonder how American audiences will take this film. Yeah, Damon and Freeman will be a draw but do people in America have an interest in Rugby or in South Africa? It’s fine if they don’t but what audiences will be missing if they choose not to see this film is a true historical moment in sports and politics that bonded a nation. And they’ll be missing that rare human quality film that usually shows its head at Oscar nomination time. This one a film about the universal power of forgiveness and a man who had the foresight to lead his country to victory, and lead others like Pienaar to truth. True story.

Rated PG-13, and you may see two South African flags in the film. The flag had just changed to include everyone in the country. See Francois Pienaar on Mandela here (SPOILER ALERT)  and a news recap of the event.