Since Clint Eastwood is fast becoming my favourite director, I was excited about seeing how he’d tackle a film which combined politics and sport. Based on true events, Invictus follows Nelson Mandela’s (Morgan Freeman) first couple of years as President of South Africa and how he succeeded in achieving what many believed to be impossible, bringing a country which was completely divided together again and exceeding expectations beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

The film has a powerful opening as it juxtaposes shots of white children playing football with shots of black children playing separately. This immediately highlights the lack of unity in the country at the time of Nelson Mandela’s realease from prison and reveals the challenge he faced in bringing the country together.

Following his release from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa and came to power in 1994. His first priority as President was to “balance black aspirations with white fears” and attempt to end the tensions and hostilities that apartheid had created. He sees an opportunity to do this by getting behind the country’s Springboks rugby team in preparation for the 1995 world cup team and using their success as a way to bring the country together and defy expectations. Although he never actually states his intention outright, he arranges a meeting with the Captain of the Springboks Francois Peinaar (Matt Damon), and Francois gathers from this meeting that Mandela wants the Springboks to win the World Cup. Despite the odds being against them, as the Springboks are losing most of the games they play, Peinaar and Mandela set out to achieve this and change the mindset and performance of the team in time for the World Cup.

It was no surprise to see Morgan Freeman play Nelson Mandela as it’s a role he was destined for. He looks the part and completely immerses himself in the role to the extent that you completely forget you’re watching an actor, and not Mandela himself. Although the film mainly covers Mandela’s politics, it also reveal brief glimpses into his troubled family life and the strained relationship he has with his daughter, reminding the viewer that despite his great reputation, he is also an ordinary man with ordinary problems. Matt Damon is in impressive shape as Francois Peinaar and looks every inch the rugby player. He clearly put a lot of effort into getting fit and learning how to play the sport and this is evident in the rugby scenes, as he throws himself into the sport and doesn’t stand out from the other players. As Francois, he seems a little lacking in character and assertiveness. If this is what the real Francois Peinaar was like, it’s difficult to understand how he lead his team to victory when he could barely raise his voice. A little bit of artistic license could have been useful here in making the character’s leadership skills more evident.

The last thirty minutes of Invictus were probably the most entertaining as they cover the World Cup final match and show the gritty nature of the sport, as well as showing how the Rugby team have succeeded in making their country feel united, as black and white fans all get behind the team and cheer them on. Eastwood goes a bit overboard with his coverage of rugby scrums and there are ridiculous grunting noises played in slow motion, which are hard to take seriously. Yes, it’s a tiring sport, but there’s no need to rub this fact in our faces. It’s obvious.

My biggest complaint about Invictus is that it sometimes edges into corny. The music contains lyrics about defying expectations, and there are flashbacks to Mandela’s time spent in prison, which I thought was unnecessary. Everyone knows he spent a long time in prison, so these flashbacks just seemed surplus to requirement. The pace of the film is quite slow, but it’s such an interesting topic you don’t lose interest. The end credits add a touch of authenticity to the film as there is a photo montage with images from the actual match, reminding the viewer that these events really happened and leaving them feeling unavoidably inspired.

Dir: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman

Have you seen the 2005 Michael Bay film, The Island? That bloated and overbearing film was constantly in the back of my head as I was watching Never Let Me Go. The premise similarities are striking, as is the fact that the film (The Island) and the book (“Never Let Me Go”) came out around the same time. However, the film itself was purported to be a rip off of Michael Marshall Smith’s 1996 book “Spares” and Philip K. Dick’s 1964 novel “The Penultimate Truth,” so I guess the concept isn’t all that new. That “Never” is in the same vein as the rest of these works is not a spoiler, nor did the filmmakers want it to be. I was fortunate enough to catch an interview with the writer of the novel, Kazuo Ishiguro, together with screenplay writer Alex Garland. Alex clearly stated that the story they wanted to tell was a personal one and they did not want to be coy and keep anything a secret. In fact, there is a scene about 20 minutes in where someone, subtly but without question, spills the beans. The story of this dystopian world, a place that would allow this type of thing to happen, is just the backdrop and not the story that they wanted to tell. The morals and ramifications of such decisions are not discussed, so just because the storyteller does not want to share the answers does not mean that the audience won’t be asking, and be hounded by the questions.

In his novel “Never Let Me Go,” Kazuo Ishiguro (also the writer of “The Remains of the Day”) created a story of love, loss and hidden truths. In it he posed the fundamental question: What makes us human? Kathy (Carey Mulligan from An Education), Tommy (Andrew Garfield – The Social Network) and Ruth (Keira Knightley – those Pirate films) live in a world and a time that feels familiar to us, but is not quite like anything we know. They spend their childhood at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic English boarding school. When they leave the shelter of the school, and the terrible truth of their fate is revealed to them, they must also confront the deep feelings of love, jealousy and betrayal that pull them apart.

To return to my previous point, this is a very British film. Where The Island is full of huge passions, big explosions and all the delicacy of a flying brick, Never Let Me Go is filled with people and pauses that are pregnant with repressed and subdued emotions. The comedian Eddie Izzard put it best here. That was one of the things that kept me at such a distance from the characters in this film. These people in this film underwent some very traumatic and emotional experiences and they go through it as calm as Buddhist monks. It wasn’t until near the end that someone has a genuine and well-needed outburst. Until that happened, I hadn’t realized how much of the characters’ unexpressed emotions were building up within me and how much I was waiting for that release, waiting for someone to be…well…human.

The other thing that kept me at a distance was what I brought up in the first paragraph. I can respect that the filmmakers did not want to focus on the sci-fi aspects, but by ignoring the new world they are building, they may just as well not have made it to begin with. People are completely and fundamentally selfish. Things need to be taken from people by force. Even by having the main trio of friends discuss or witness some sort of rebellion would have been plenty, just so we know that it exists and what happens to those who try. Without it though, I was constantly asking myself why these people were willingly going along with their unjust fates. However, listening to the writers after the screening, they brought up a great point. The slaves in America did not become free because they rebelled, but because those who enslaved them decided not to do so anymore. The Jews did not stop their own genocide because they rose up against their oppressors but because the Allies occupied Europe. Ishiguro stated in the interview, “people are remarkably accepting of their fate.” It seems a truthful, if cynical, worldview to say that people just don’t escape.

The standouts for this film were the trio of main actors as well as the three children who played their counterparts at a younger age. Izzy Meikle-Small, Ella Purnell and Charlie Rowe play Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield respectively during their time at Hailsham. For being so young, all three of them brought a great deal of depth and heart to their roles and I will be looking out for all three of them to see what they do with their talent. Keira Knightley has always been an enigma for me on screen. She never really seems to buy into any role she’s playing and it feels like she just goes along with the motions and says the words given her. In this film, especially in certain scenes, she rose slightly from that opinion although it was almost cruel to cast her next to Carey Mulligan. Carey is quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses because she imbues all her characters with such pathos; she is electric. As far as Andrew Garfield goes, his character in this film was a bit of a spaz and bordered on being slightly mentally challenged. I don’t know if that was by writer’s design or by actor’s choice but I wasn’t really digging it. That said, Garfield is a force to be reckoned with. He is going to be Spiderman, for Pete’s sake. All six of these performances are the reason to see this film. It is a tour de force from all actors involved; I just wish the story would have let me get closer to them.

“Man is steel. The tank is only iron.” On July 12, 2006, conflict began between Israel and Lebanon. It began when Hezbollah soldiers fired rockets into Israel and blew up two armored Humvees patrolling the Israeli side of the border. Three soldiers died. Two other soldiers were taken by Hezbollah into Lebanon. Israel responded and for 34 days they carried out air strikes and rolled into Lebanon with tanks and foot soldiers. The writer/director of Lebanon, Samuel Maoz, was himself a gunner in one of those tanks, so this is a sort-of autobiography of his experiences. You can feel that placing this story on paper and on celluloid was a form therapy for Samuel. He places us, as the audience, in the dark, dank, cold, putrid, unwelcoming pit of a monster that he knows all too well. And because the camera never leaves the inside of that tank, save for two small book-ending scenes, he shows us what it felt like to be sequestered in those claustrophobic spaces only understanding the outside world what we see through the gunner’s scope.

A single tank is sent into a small town that has already been bombed by the Israeli Air Force. Inside the tank are four young men: Herzel (Oshri Cohen), the loader; Assi (Itay Tiran), the commander; Yigal (Michael Moshonov), the driver; and Shmuel (Yoav Donat), the gunner. For all of them, this is their first taste of war. The first day of fighting pushes all four of these men past anything they were trained for. For who can be trained to fire on unarmed civilians, to plow their way through streets that just hours before teemed with life, to see the blood and havoc that war creates and not let it change and effect their humanity.

The other film that is constantly being brought up when one speaks of Lebanon is Waltz with Bashir, the foreign picture Oscar contender of 2008. Both of them deal with the same war and the same psychological trauma it inflicted on its soldiers, but in wholly different ways. This film showed me an entirely new angle to war, one I had not seen in any war film. The closest comparison that comes to mind is the German film Das Boot but even in that film the sense of confinement doesn’t feel this suffocating. It is impressive that I felt the same heart-pounding, dizzying feeling I got from the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan from sections of this film and, as I’ve said, the camera never leaves the inside of the tank.

When the gunner is looking out his scope, we get to see some sunshine. We get to see a family torn apart. We get to see a soldier bleed out. We get to see inside a travel agency and have a weird feeling in the pits of our stomachs as the crosshairs of the cannon rests upon a picture of the Twin Towers. Most times with any slight movement the turret moans and creaks in protest, but as with any gimmick there are other times when this is cheated, when empathy is being attempted and the whirrs and clanks would get in the way, so they are left out all together. Apart from this story necessary hitch, the rest of the sound design makes it feel like the world is about to come crushing down around us. The only real gripe I have is that the score is sometimes misaligned and did not add to what I was watching. However, that is a small quibble for a film I honestly and whole heartedly respect.

The first thing that struck me as I was watching this film was how confident the filmmaking felt. For only being the second film that Samuel Maoz has ever directed and first one written, you can feel how much he knew this story and exactly how best to portray it. He was able to take what could have been a gimmick and made it impressive. If I venture to read more into it than may be there, it showed how myopic the “war machine” is. The young men, specifically the gunner, can’t really see most of the destruction that their shells are creating. One of God’s little blessings. Just as the people who sit in plush chairs and push pens across paper to declare war cannot see the destruction they cause. Like I said, that may not be what Samuel was going for, but it feels apropos.