Noel Vera (noelbotevera)

Invictus--call it jingoistic, call it hokey, Eastwood's style is understated and unassuming enough he manages to make you believe Freeman IS Nelson Mandela (saw the guy in LA; he was pretty short), and that he has genuinely sincere interest in the Springboks' eventual victory. And while Eastwood's no John Huston he does generate sufficient excitement in the climactic match (too much slow motion, but what the hey) that you can't help clapping a little.

Can't help but read it as Eastwood's Obama flick, something like "if we believe in the unbelievable, it will happen." Thing is, it DID happen--Mandela was released, and elected president. You can't quite believe it (not if you've followed South African history) and the cute thing about Freeman's performance is that he doesn't quite believe it's happened, either--he keeps looking warily around, to check if the whole thing'll vanish in a moment.

Not bad; not bad at all.

Not bad. After so many years the squalor and desperation of three people lusting for and lacerating each other at close quarters stays with you far longer than does the more baroque latter half. Brando's squeaky voice doesn't translate well to a generation that has forgotten him, but his volatility does make an impression; Vivien Leigh is sad and brave till she's asked to perform a basically unplayable breakdown scene. Elia Kazan directs with more shadows than I've ever seen him use in any other film; if only he had turned the volume down on Alex North's grotesque music score.

It's the rare film from a country that has actually experienced Japanese wartime occupation where the Japanese are less like inhuman monsters and more like unhappy human beings--a remarkable feat of empathy, not to mention forgiveness (the film was attacked for this, when it opened in 1976). It is also, in terms of emotional impact, forlorn beauty, understanding of the human condition, in my book the greatest film ever made.

Featuring arguably Welles' finest performance (as Shakespeare's Falstaff--and isn't it perverse that he would make of the Bard's greatest comic creation a tragic figure?), plus the only battle sequence he ever filmed--incidentally, one of the greatest ever made. Branagh attempted to match it in his Henry V; Gibson tried to emulate it in Braveheart; Jackson staged a dryer version in Fellowship of the Rings; all threw a combined effort of hundreds of millions of dollars, far more than Welles ever spent in his entire career, and all failed--mainly because none had even a fraction of his Brobdingnagian talent. A great film, one of the greatest ever made.