According to a recent survey by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, 24% of South Africans said they never spoke to people of other races on a typical day, and 46% admitted to “never socializing” with people of other races in their own homes or friends’ homes. About 15 years ago, former South Africa President Nelson Mandela used rugby to preach transformation and reconciliation in his country. But today in South Africa, rugby is still a predominantly white sport while soccer is a predominately black sport. Invictus is the new Clint Eastwood film about Mandela’s efforts to foster unity through sport. And in his regular film commentary, Milos Stehlik of Facets Multimedia gives his take on the film.

Old men often make soft films. Hormones or cumulative life experience have tempered the fighting spirit, and great filmmakers from Jean Renoir to John Ford end up creating films that are sometimes plain old sentimental. Old age leads filmmakers to their Capra-esque moments. So it is with 79-year-old Clint Eastwood in his Invictus. The Clint Eastwood of Play Misty for Me or Dirty Harry is in the distant past. This is Clint Eastwood making his It’s a Wonderful Life.

This said, Invictus is a wonderfully made film. It’s the story of Nelson Mandela, as he is released from 27 years in prison, elected president of South Africa and faces a deeply divided nation with the white minority feeling bitterly disenfranchised. Invictus is the story of South African reconciliation, told through the prism of the World Rugby Championships.

As Mandela becomes president, the South African rugby team, the Springboks, are pathetic. Cubs-loving Chicagoans will feel instant recognition. They get decimated at every game. The team captain, blond-haired Francois Pienaar, played by Matt Damon, would like to lift the team out of their rut, but how?

Mandela, who knows little about rugby, realizes that the sport could become the focal point for all of South Africa – white and black - generating a feeling of national pride and unity. He invites Pienaar to the presidential palace for tea. Mandela, played with a great deal of charisma by Morgan Freeman, is charming and disarming, and inspires Pienaar with the thought that the Springboks should dare the big dream of winning the World Cup.

The political division of South Africa, and Mandela’s crafty strategy to disarm it, are reflected through the microcosm of Mandela’s security team. The bodyguards are shocked when Mandela forces them to work together with Afrikaners.

Of course, we know where the rugby match that’s at the heart of Invictus leads. After the South African team, having given up their beer-guzzling for long runs at 6 a.m. miraculously defeats the French team in the semi-finals, they face New Zealand in the championship. The New Zealand team, which uses an intimidating Maori war ritual before the start of every game, are known as the All Blacks, because of their uniforms.

The last 18-minutes of the film are given to the climactic World Cup game. Played in front of 62,000 digitally-added fans at the Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg, the game is brutal and visceral. Throughout, Mandela’s invective to Francois Pienaar, to believe in yourself and push beyond the limits to succeed, is the emotional thread, inspired by William Henley’s poem which Mandela teaches Pienaar:

”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.”

Invictus was the dream project for Morgan Freeman and is based on the book “Playing the Enemy” by John Carlin. Even if Freeman appears a little too saintly at the beginning of the film, and Matt Damon struggles to add depth to his transparently-thin characterization, Invictus seems seamless, a smart and sharply controlled directorial effort from Eastwood.

The film’s moral message is crystallized in a boat tour the South African team suddenly takes to Robben Island, to see the prison cell in which Mandela spent decades. Visibly moved by the experience, Francois Pienaar’s final inspiration comes from the thought of how Mandela, imprisoned in the tiny cell, found the heart to forgive and unite with the very people who put him there. Clint Eastwood’s Invictus is a film that courts realism even as it embraces sentiment.

Milos Stehlik’s commentaries reflect his own views and not necessarily those of Facets Multimedia, Worldview or 91.5 WBEZ.