We don’t get many PG movies designed for general audiences but this week we have two, both sweet romances, “Letters to Juliet” and “Just Wright.” The first is the story of girl about to be married who helps a woman find the love she lost half a century before. The second is about a physical therapist brought in to help an NBA star get back into the game. While the films are not intended for or suitable for children and today’s PG is more like the PG-13 of ten years ago, it is still very nice to see Hollywood recognize that it is possible to tell a love story without a lot of nudity, bad language, or violence.
Also this week: “Robin Hood” with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, the latest in dozens of depictions of the gallant rebel who took on the corrupt on behalf of the downtrodden.
Disney’s online role-playing game Pixie Hollow is based on its DVD series about Tinker Bell and her friends. It gives children a chance to select a (female) fairy avatar and interact with other fairies. Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams reports that Pixie Hollow has its first boy avatar, called a “sparrow man.”
But children are pretty resourceful little gender warriors. The open secret around the Hollow has long been that if you make your fairy tall, with short hair, and give her an ambiguous name like Jamie, she can pretty quickly establish a reputation as a he.
It may be that little boys want to play. Or, it may be that little girls want to have boy characters to dress up and interact with. It may be that today’s children are comfortable exploring the meaning of gender boundaries.
The fact that when young visitors create characters now they’re presented with both a female and a male avatar and prompted to “please pick one” is a big deal for a generation that’s going to grow up spending a portion of its life online. It says that there are choices.
Clint Eastwood tells the story of South Africa’s triumph in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the first World Cup after the end of apartheid. The title, “Invictus” comes from the inspiring poem that Nelson Mandela shared with the team’s captain, Francois Pienaar. The movie is respectful, dignified, and a little dull.
Mandela is played by Morgan Freeman, who shows us the new President’s grace and patience as well as his wisdom in treating everyone — even those who opposed the end of apartheid and believe his presidency is illegitimate — as countrymen, not enemies. He directs his black security detail to work with their white predecessors, and to remind them that it is important to smile at the people you are asking to move. Many people were skeptical that a black man who has spent 27 years in prison can lead a country where the white population had imposed legal segregation on the black citizens, asking “He can win an election. But can he run a country?”
And even his most loyal supporters wonder if he isn’t being unrealistic and trivial in hoping that a sports team can make a difference. “Unite for something more important than rugby,” one tells him. But the very first scene shows us Mandela, just after becoming President, driving down a road that has a wealthy, well-equipped white team playing on one side and a group of poor black boys in rags playing on the other. He knows that the rugby team can be a powerful symbol of unity and teamwork. He knows that all of the people of South Africa need to feel pride and a sense of shared purpose. He spent 27 years observing the Afrikaans guards at the prison and learning what was important to them. And so, he invites Pienaar (Matt Damon) to meet with him and he begins to memorize the names and faces of Pienaar’s team.
Eastwood has a good eye for striking images. While he does not handle the dynamism of the games well, he does make the rugby huddles look like something between a colorful Gordian knot and a many-legged creature. He has a gift for the small moments — a boy loitering near a police car so he can listen to the game on their radio, a housekeeper’s face when she is given a ticket to watch the game. He draws a connection between the two men — both are ferociously dedicated to making sure no one takes what is their away from them, not on their watch, and not today. But the impact is softened with dialog like “It’s not just a game!”
Mandela is such a transformative figure and Freeman such a distinguished actor that we are drawn in. It is impossible not to be stirred when he says, he does not want his followers to prove that they are what the whites feared; “We have to surprise them with compassion, restraint, and generosity.” But for a sports movie it is oddly lacking in momentum. Mandela tells Pienaar that he needs the team to win. We’re pretty sure that if they had not won, there would not be a movie about it (or, if there was, it would not be called the Latin word for “unconquered”). But that means we want to know why. We may get a sense of the way Mandela inspired Pienaar, but how did Pienaar inspire his team? Damon looks very buff and Pienaar seems like a nice guy, but this is rugby, one of the toughest sports on earth. How about showing us a little more ferocity? Some kind of strategy? Some individual personalities for the players? The New Zealand team they have to play in the big match does a little Maori war dance before the game that is more vivid and arresting than anything we see from the team we are supposed to be rooting for. Eastwood tells us this is all very important, but he never really shows us.
Harrison Ford has his best role in years as a testy scientist who listens to classic rock as he works all night in the lab and who may just have the key to a crucial medicine for a disease that kills children. Brendan Fraser plays John Crowley, the father of two children with a rare genetic disorder called Pompe disease that weakens muscles, enlarges organs, and had a life expectancy of less than eight years. Crowley quit his job as an executive in a pharmaceutical company to start a biotechnology firm to support the most promising research into a treatment for the disease.
That research was being done by Dr. Robert Stonehill (Ford), a twice-divorced, sardonic, and very stubborn professor. Crowley offers him the chance to get the resources he needs to test his theories. He raises the money for a start-up and handles the business side while Stonehill cranks up the Grateful Dead and insults people.
Ford, who bought the rights to the story when he read about it in the newspaper, produced the film and his long-time Hollywood experience and sure sense of story-telling shows. Screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs (“Chocolat,” “The Shipping News”) gently streamlined the story to shape the narrative. The Stonehill character is based on several different scientists who worked on the research and some of the most dramatic moments are shorthand summaries of real-life developments. But all of this is in aid of a powerful story that is pro-life in the broadest and most profound sense. Crowley has to ask himself what is best for his children — to be with them as much as possible while they are alive or to leave them for 20-hour days in the hopes of finding treatment that could keep them alive longer.
Ford inhabits the role the way his character inhabits his well-worn jeans and t-shirt. He knows this guy. He has no illusions but he likes him and he makes us like him, too. Fraser, too often underrated as an actor, manages to make Crowley inspiring without making him unbelievable, especially in the scenes with the children and with Keri Russell as his wife. Jacobs’ script skirts the usual tensions. The Crowleys have some agonizing moments, but they never question their commitment to their children and each other. The children are played by Meredith Droeger, who has a nice dry humor, and Diego Velazquez, who has beautifully expressive eyes. Their healthy brother John Jr. (Sam M. Hall) has a lovely moment when he shows how devoted he is to helping his siblings. And Courtney B. Vance is as always most welcome as the father of two other children with Pompe, making a strong impression in his brief time on screen.
Because the tension is between the Crowleys and the disease and between Crowley and Stonehill and Crowley and the bureaucrats and money people, the story can present the family as functional in the face of the greatest possible tensions and terrors. In the past, we’ve seen Ford fight the Empire and the Nazis and Fraser take on mummies, but in this story they take on something even more scary and the result is touching and inspiring.
