Less is more! Amazing, restrained directing by Eastwood!

Rating: 9/10 (13 December 2009)

This film was simply so well directed by Eastwood. He has already won the Best Director Award from the National Board of Review, and he certainly will be one of the favorites for it at the Oscars, along with James Cameron and Jason Reitman.
Where do I start? This film is so unlike most other sports films out there for a lot of reasons, mostly because Eastwood doesn't try to manipulate your emotions with phony "tearjerker" scenes or scenes with some kind of phony conflicts/crises between characters. In many ways the film is kind of boring in that it is relatively quiet and free of any kind of loud sounds, drama, or music. When the musical score does appear, it appears sporadically and is rather quiet and serene. It is very much directed like a low budget documentary, where Eastwood is only interested in telling how, when, and where this story took place, along with who was affected. He doesn't do what an inferior director would do, which is add in more dramatic scenes involving Mandela's or Pennier's family life to try to add more romance to the film, or try to make the Rugby World Cup tournament into some kind of amazing event that resolved all of South Africa's problems. Also, when the game is over at the end, we simply see Freeman and Damon shake hands and say thank you to each other for about 15 seconds, then they walk away from each other. No one is carried off the field, and the South Africa team is never really portrayed as an underdog. None of the players on the other team taunt them or even speak to them, and we never see much of a montage of the playoffs leading up to the big game. Also, no player or coach dies right before the big game (typical phony conflict to try to manipulate your emotions). There's way less of any of these things than other directors would do. There are no close-ups of their faces with tears running down their cheeks, or any real dramatic dialogue. Eastwood isn't trying to make them both superheroes, as a lesser director would do. He's just trying to show that is one event helped bring the people of South Africa together for at least a short time, and that's all.
Eastwood simply goes by the old "less is more" strategy in ever way he directs this film. Like I stated earlier, the film is close to being boring because of the lack of any loud sounds or surprise dramatic developments. My favorite part of the whole film, and this is somewhat of a spoiler, was the entire championship game at the end, which seemed to last at least 20 minutes or so. During this 20 minute climax, the film suddenly turns into basically a silent film without any dialogue, with Eastwood just going back and forth between the action on the field and people watching on TV from their homes all over South Africa. This dialogue free time, with some beautiful music in the background was simply amazing art, and took away any of the typical sports "cliches" that other directors would have used during this time. Damon gives a "let's go" type of pep talk to the team near the end of the game, but that pep talk was only about 15 seconds, whereas other directors would have made that scene probably a minute or two, with tears dripping down players cheeks, to try to manipulate your emotions.
The performances by Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon are excellent, with a certain Oscar nomination for Morgan Freeman specifically. The cinematography was well done, as the film was filmed entirely on location. However, the star of this baby is really Eastwood, as his style is so free of manipulation or gimmicks. He truly respects the audience's intelligence by not shoving material or dramatic events down our throat. Instead, he backs off and lets us ingest the scenes, interpret them, and allow them to mean whatever we as the audience want them to mean. This is film directing at its finest.