Off to the picture show

Well, I’m off to see Invictus tonight. I’ve been so looking forward to this. It’s based on Playing the Enemy, which is a really fantastic book. I have some doubts, of course. You do with any movie adaptation. First, it’s Clint Eastwood, and that weird combo of macho and melodramatic, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, that I find a little off-putting. And Matt Damon looks NOTHING like Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African rugby team. Other than being blond and bipedal.

Most of all, I’m doubtful because in Playing the Enemy John Carlin did a wonderful job of distilling a huge issue into an understandable narrative. And he did it by telling some of the incredible individual stories that are involved in the end of apartheid. I’m doubting that Anton Lubowski or the jet flyover made it into the movie. And since Amazon has the hardcover book for $8, Super Saver shipping eligible . . . I’m just saying.

I’m less concerned about mythologizing Mandela. We worry a lot about not making leaders super human in history. And when you see the scope of what happened in the predominantly peaceful end of apartheid, it is a moment in time worthy of myth-making. And Mandela does deserve his place in history. Playing the Enemy does a particularly good job of showing the forces that were in play that make what happened in South Africa remarkable. You know, your local library probably has a copy.

Anyway. I’m pretty stoked to see this movie. And see if Eastwood and Morgan Freeman may have caught lightning in a bottle a second time out of this story. Fingers crossed.