Movie Critics Corner Take 3; or Things that have nothing to do with anthropology

I was really excited about this movie, it looked inspiring and uplifting and had two actors that I really enjoy, Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Damon is incredibly attractive in this film, so just like rate your professor.com, it gets bonus points for hotness level. I can't help being a girl.




Delicioso...

In general, the movie was really good. The message was inspiring, especially since it was based on real events. But something was missing for me and I still haven't figured out what exactly it was or if it's more me than the movie.

Accents: The South African accents that were used were really interesting (I love hearing accents) and made the setting believable, but I had a hard time understanding people sometimes. So this issue is likely my problem more than the movie's.

Morgan Freeman: no complaints - He made an excellent Nelson Mandela and brought a lot of realism to the role. I do wish they had fleshed out his relationship with his family more since it was portrayed as troubled and that is something I have never known when reading about him. But overall, excellent.

Time Period: I liked how you see a lot of the overall racial issues going on in South Africa at the time through the prism of Mandela's bi-racial security team. These guys don't trust each other at all and I think the first line that the head dude says to the white security detail when they first enter the room sums it all up, "Are you here to arrest us?" Because that had been a regular occurrence.

I do wish we could have had a little more history. We know Mandela was imprisoned and that it was unfair, but as Americans (and my generation especially) we don't have a great understanding of what exactly happened. We start the film with Mandela being released from prison and people say things and news reports mention that black South Africans can now vote (and that was 1994!), but I would have liked to have seen flashbacks to understand what it was previously like, political arrests/societal oppression, etc. And maybe see why it suddenly changed (was it more international or internal pressure?). Clint Eastwood, show me, don't tell me!

I think what I really wanted was an explanation for why white South Africans felt that the previous apartheid government was ok. Why they felt that they were actually superior and could just say racist comments out loud and think nothing of it. But questions concerning government/societal indoctrination of racist norms is not, I guess, really a part of a movie that shows how a man tried to move people past those issues. Much like the South Africans in the movie, we the audience are pushed to focus on the future. It makes sense, but I'm left wanting more context.

Rugby: I'm not sure if the movie needed more rugby or more structure to let the audience know what was going on. I know a little about rugby and have watched a few games (world cup a few years ago: biggest Frenchmen I have ever seen, wiped the floor with my poor Irish kin), and this movie reminded me that for such a brutal sport, rugby is surprisingly boring. I don't know why. Huge guys dragging each other up and down a field should be interesting, but it's not and I think the problem is the scrum. And that's what the issue was in the movie.



Much like real life, there's a lot of scrum and not a whole lot of running (except for the Maori guy in the New Zealand match, he kicked ass). So you have a lot of camera shots of the scrum, where all the action is taking place. And to catch this exciting time, we are in the middle of it, watching from below as these guys heave and ho against each other for field and ball advantage.

The problem is that it's not exciting, I'm not on the edge of my seat wondering if the little guy who's name I can't remember is going to get the ball or get trampled. And if you aren't watching the screen, it sounds kind of like a bad porn or a day at Gold's gym, i.e. a lot of grunting.

I'll be honest, this is probably me. I just may be scrumophobic. And I don't know how to improve these scenes, although a more intense instrumental music sequence might have helped. I'm thinking battle scenes from Braveheart or Gladiator, something heavy on ethnic/tribal drums, maybe a bodran. But I didn't feel the intensity of the game and I needed to since it was as much a main character as Nelson Mandela or Pienaar.

So, it was good and inspiring, but I wish I felt it a bit more. And I wish I had waited for it to come out on Netflix.