‘Tis the season for five-o’clock dinners followed by family trips to the movie theater. If you’ve been a good Devoted Intellectual til now (and with Santa on his way, why be bad this late in the game?) you woke up this morning to the Intellectual Devotional’s entry on Nelson Mandela, the leader of the South African anti-apartheid movement and the first democratically elected president of the post-apartheid state he did so much to create. Time to follow up your reading with a trip to the cineplex!

Invictus is the latest from director Clint Eastwood. It is the story of how Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) publicly embraced South Africa’s rugby team soon after becoming president. The team was long-popular with whites and widely-hated by blacks, and, in one of his first gestures toward interracial unity, Mandela tried to reverse this trend. In doing so, he worked closely with the team’s captain, Francois Pienaar (played by Matt Damon). The Mandela that emerges is a wily operator rather than a secular saint, and Eastwood’s film is a worthy tribute to him. A great way to spend part of your Christmas Eve!

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