Sunday, May 30, 2010

Obictus

I finally saw "Invictus."  I thought it was quite good, although I'm really no closer to understanding rugby.

I can't be the first person to comment on this, but wasn't this film basically about Obama?  I mean, here's the first black president elected to lead a divided nation with a shameful history of white-on-black racial oppression.  Whites are expecting the worst, and blacks are itching for payback.  But the new president decides that it's more important to heal his nation than deliver to the people who put him in office, so he spends a lot of time trying to get blacks to swallow their desires and tolerate the whites who were oppressing them just a few years earlier.  It almost seems like director Clint Eastwood's fantasy for what Obama should have been doing after his inauguration.

3 comments:

Eric Rubin said...

i just watched invictus this weekend. It may be Morgan Freeman fatigue, but i jut never believed he was mandela. and apparently, the guy damon was playing was like 6'4" and built like a Nazi tank. and i did not get the chills when they won. that, to me, is a sign that the movie was "eh" because i get the chills at baby food commercials.

p.s. love yer new layout. (said in my best hannibal lecter accent)

Seth Masket said...

I'm with you, Eric. I got chills when Rocky, Daniel LaRusso, Roy Hobbs, and the team in "Hoosiers" won, even though I saw those victories coming a mile away. But when the South African rugby team won, I said, "That's nice." It shouldn't be that hard.

I think I would have been happier if the president was just Morgan Freeman playing Morgan Freeman, like in "Deep Impact." He did a fine job playing Mandela, but the whole role was a bit weird. It was like watching "Gandhi," only the only times we see Gandhi, he's rooting for a Madras cricket team.

Eric Rubin said...

fuck, man. i got chills in the last episode of Parenthood. Now that should tell you how bad Invictus was.