Invictus

If you are looking for a lesson on  Team Building, leadership, perseverance, self belief, focus, effective communication, positive thinking and an orientation for success, then Invictus, the film, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon in pivotal roles and directed by Clint Eastwood, is a must watch.

Invictus, the 2009 film, based on  John Carlin’s 2008 book ‘ Playing the Enemy : Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation’, met with both, critical acclaim and box office success amassing $122 million. Both Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon were nominated for the Oscars.

In 1994, Nelson Mandela became the President of South Africa, marking the end of the apartheid era in the rainbow nation. However, things were not easy for the President at that time. A racially divided society, a weak economy, law and order issues , mutual distrust and an unsettling under current, were some of the major challenges facing Mandela. He had to bring the country together and he saw an opportunity with the scheduled Rugby World Cup in South Africa a year later, in 1995.

The South African Team got an automatic entry into the World Cup being the host nation and considering their performance in the practise games no one gave the team any chance in the tournament. The scene in which Nelson Mandela( played by Morgan Freeman ) invites Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African Team ( played by Matt Damon ) is one of the defining moments of the Film. Francois a white captain of an almost white team of South Africans is extremely skeptical about his future before meeting the President. But once he meets him all his anxieties vanish and the President and the captain of the Rugby Team come together to unify the country and get everyone strongly behind the home team.

President Mandela faces initial resistance, but his charisma, his clarity of thinking, and his stubborn determination gets everyone by his side. As the tournament begins, the South Africans begin to put up improved performances and as they progress in the tournament the country comes together to back their team. The players too soar in confidence and begin to believe that they can do the impossible. And so they do, by beating the World Cup favourites New Zealand to win the  Title.

The Film has very emphatically brought about the transition which happened in the country during the World Cup which speaks volumes of the leadership of Nelson Mandela and how he so carefully nurtured a fragile and divisive society into one strong community. Francois Pienaar too led his team with gumption and repaid the faith of Nelson Mandela. Invictus  is a film for the ages, it is an epic and surely a Management case study.

Nelson Mandela’s struggles have shown that his spirit has been truly Invictus ( undefeated, unconquered). So when in the last scenes he sees the people of his country celebrating their victory in the streets, Nelson Mandela is heard saying ‘ Invictus …again ‘.