Comments on: Fumbled by Americans

By: Morpheus Rising

Morpheus Rising — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:53:55 +0000

The Rottentomatoes rating is a joke. I went to watch Invictus after viewing Gran Torino on DVD and was very hopeful that Eastwood would make a great movie out of this story. Instead I ended up squirming in my seat, laughing out loud several times ‘Fakus gahs fakus!’, and leaving the theatre thinking it was the worst movie I have seen in the past year.

The problem is this. It tells a Mandela story. In our era of delusional neo-liberal PC bs this makes it a good film, even if it’s a bad film (watch somebody call me a racist). Freeman did his best, and Matt Damon will probably never live this film down, but mostly it was the directing and casting that killed it:

1. Half the players in the Springbok team were Americans putting on bad Saffir accents, with the worst offender being Eastwood’s son as Joel Stransky.
2. This decision actually makes sense after watching the way the SA sourced cast performed. I don’t know what it is about South African actors but, D9 excepted, they tend to put on such wooden performances. You end up feeling like you’re watching a play where the actors are mentally rehearsing their lines all the time and are feeling self-conscious about being on camera.
3. Slow motion during the final. Good grief. Slow mo to draw out emotive moments should have died with the perm and everything else from the ’80s. The effect is to create the impression that Eastwood felt that the moment was lacking in drama and needed to enhance it (as was the case with the weird scene when the jumbo flew over Ellis Park, which made it look like this was decided on the spur of the moment).
4. The rugby simulations were awful. They looked exactly like actors playing a game they knew nothing about. The Springbok team didn’t even look like athletes.

Horrific, all round.

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By: Krokodil Ngwenya

Krokodil Ngwenya — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:36:23 +0000

I felt the exact same thing. They missed the very point they were trying to make because they failed to demonstrate the threat of civil war on all the levels it existed at. They didn’t even get the games right (jeez, didn’t these guys even bother to watch the damn tapes???)
Death by Hollywood, bwah!

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By: Roger Young

Roger Young — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:14:19 +0000

Transformers 2: was a 9/10 on imdb for it’s first 2 months. And Rotten Tomatoes pools critics mostly from the USA. Of course they think it’s a great film, its got Mandela in it. Of course we’ll think its a great film, it’s got rugby in it and hey, it means the American’s like us. But it really is lazy film making and it calls into question whether or not he is an insightful observer of character out side of his own context.

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By: joel

joel — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:52:08 +0000

Doesn’t look to me like Eastwood is pissing on his entire career. The movie has received rave reviews and an average rating of 77% on rotton tomatoes and 8 out of 10 on IMDb. Eastwood has been nominated for a Golden Globe as best director for this movie… Just saying…

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By: Roger Young

Roger Young — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:26:41 +0000

Okay, I’m going to have to jump in and clarify that. In the film Mandela makes a point of having his Guards made up of MK and former Security branch, to represent unity because the public sees the Guard everywhere he goes. He uses the Guards to send a message. Eastwood uses this as a significant plot point. The later on in the film he makes the Presidential Guards look like fools in order to create a fake tension merely because the film is starting to feel flat. What this does is destroy his lead characters credibility, that’s Mandela’s credibility by implying that he chose Guards, both black and white who were incompetent. Regardless of what this means in terms of an insult to the actual people it erodes the central idea of the film which is simply, Mandela knew what he was doing.

Maybe I should have written “insulting to the professionalism of the presidential guard’, that would have made it clearer.

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By: tumi.j

tumi.j — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:15:34 +0000

‘…insulting to the professionalism of our presidential guard’ – as a burning issue this is down there with oh did Joost keep the receipt for the camcorder and has Malema really had his ears fitted with a device (holidaying in Thailand) that inverts boos into cheers! the presidential guard…

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By: Paul K

Paul K — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:14:02 +0000

Profound, and true. I do however think both those guys knew enough about the growth of their tree to make good movies.

FYI keep on producing great reviews.

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By: Roger Young

Roger Young — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:02:54 +0000

Knowing your roots is only important if you follow the growth of the tree.

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By: Paul K

Paul K — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:54:52 +0000

I don’t think the nationality or current residence of the filmmaker has any relevance. What matters is where they came from and what they know about their roots. This is why they managed to capture some of the intricacy and subtlety of SA in District 9 and Tsotsi.

Secondly I never lauded them as total successes, rather I said they didi a ‘decent’ job of portraying the intricacies of South Africa.

Thirdly I never advocated unbridled optimism, I just said that a higher degree of optimism than that espoused in your review is warranted. But yes, I agree in principle that more initiative and output is needed from SA.

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By: Roger Young

Roger Young — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:05:29 +0000

In considering the nationality of the filmmaker one must also consider the nationality of the money being used to make the film. Both Hood and Blomkamp live outside of South Africa, both of those films were made with foreign money for foreign audiences and are triumphs because they managed to get across SOME of the subtlety of South African life. I would, however, hesitate to call them total successes, the ending of Totsi is ineptly handled and D9′s handling of the South African squatter camp residents as well as the Nigerians was extremely lazy. Both these films are a step in a better direction and must be lauded for that. But if we fall back on unbridled optimism now we will not go any further forward.

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