BEFORE: All the way to South Africa for this one - I suppose I could have used this to bridge the topics of politics and sports, but I didn't think of it. I also considered following "Hoosiers" with "Win Win", since they're both about high-school sports, but I didn't think of that either. Anyway, that would have thrown off my linking, and it's so easy to link from Gene Hackman to Morgan Freeman through "Unforgiven".
THE PLOT: Nelson Mandela, in his first term as the South African President, initiates a venture to unite the apartheid-torn land, enlisting the national rugby team on a mission to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
AFTER: Sports here in the U.S. tend to be so divisive - my team is better than your team, or my city plays football better than yours. The only time politics and sports get together is when mayors make that bet on whose team will win the Super Bowl or the World Series. But this film shows how sports can occasionally bring the people of a divided nation together. I suppose we do put our differences aside to root for the U.S. Olympic team, so really, it's a matter of scale. Democrats and Republicans can argue all day long, but give them a war against a common enemy, and everyone's an American.
I was reminded a bit about the temporary suspension of baseball games in the U.S. right after the 9/11 attacks. Eventually people determined that Americans wanted, or perhaps NEEDED the games to resume.
The Rugby Cup was played in South Africa shortly after Mandela's election, at a time when the country was still racially divided - it would have been easy for the new government to reject all that had come before, including the flag, the anthem and the old rugby team, as symbols of Apartheid. But Mandela stepped in and argued on behalf of the (mostly white) team, since he'd listened to their games while in prison. And he was trying to create a new integrated country, so the automatic rejection of anything just because it was white would have just been a form of reverse discrimination.
And there's my connection to "Hoosiers" - in which the town almost voted out the new head coach. Someone steps up, argues the case for the fairness of sports, and the coach/team gets another chance. Another connection, an underdog team defies the odds and makes it to the championship game. I don't think I'm giving much away here because they wouldn't be inclined to make a film about a team that loses the tournament in the second round, would they?
I can't say that I learned too much about the mechanics of rugby, other than it looks like a very brutal sport. Oh, I learned that you can't pass the ball forward, only back or to the side. I just tried to read some of the rules on Wikipedia and my head started to swim. I don't really get the scrum part, and the rest looks like kicking football field goals, passing like soccer (only with hands), combined with the brutality of hockey. Or maybe wrestling.
But I guess you don't need to understand the sport to get into this movie. You have to care more about the WHY of the sport, and the effect that it has. A movie covering the whys and wheres about Apartheid Could easily be boring and a big mess, but by focusing on the small, they sort of covered the large. A neat trick.
Also starring Matt Damon (last seen in "True Grit").
RATING: 7 out of 10 bruises
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