invictus : a truly inspiring story

I have watched this movie a couple of weeks ago, this movie tells about the South African rugby team “The Springboks” before and during the 1995 rugby world cup where they became the host nation. there are two main character in this movie, Nelson Mandela & Francois Pieenar which played by morgan freeman & matt damon respectively. the movie was set during the middle 90′,it was around 1994 to 1995 to be precise. Invictus in latin means undefeated.

South Africa were honored to be the host nation for the rugby world cup in 1995. Mandela was the 1st person that elected as president after the apartheid period, he had an idea that the world cup could be a powerful tool to unite the entire nation. since the end of the apartheid era, there were still a gaps between the native and whites.  Almost all of  The Springboks players were a white skin. Mandela took this chance to increase the sympathy from the native to support their national team even though there was just one black player on the team. at first, his colleague think it can’t  be the appropriate way to unite the nation. But they were false, during the final match, the native and the whites get along together to support the springboks. they stand side by side and sing the national anthem together. before the world cup, the native usually  support the opponents.

I think this movie was full with a fully inspiring scene, we can see how Francois motivate his friend after their last defeat before the world cup, he ask his team mate to drink a bad taste beer. he said this words in front of his team mate :

“It is the taste of defeat. Drink it, remember this and promise yourself never to taste it again. You’re right, it tastes like shit.”

surely,that was a magical words,the team were never taste the defeat after this moment.

actually invictus was a title of a poem which wrote by William Ernest Henley. on the last part of the movie, Mandela wrote the springboks that poem to inspire the team before the final match against New Zealand. you can hear the poem from the video below :

this movie has shown that sports can be the way to unite one nation. we can see how proud are they to be South African.