A Man Produced As Humanoid Progression: May 2010

Please welcome the Green and Gold.

I’m a big fan of Clint Eastwood. He’s established his prowess as one of the best directors working today. From 2000 to 2009 Clint has directed 9 films, starred in 4 and composed the soundtracks for 5. He was nominated for 7 Oscars total and won 2, for Best Director and Best Picture on Million Dollar Baby, and nearly a 3rd for Best Actor if not for Jamie Foxx in Ray that same year. Keep in mind, this “man” turns 80 this May. As a result of this success I guess I’ve become conditioned to expect nothing but greatness from Clint.

"Invictus" is a very good story very well told. Shortly after Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison and became president of South Africa in 1994, he seized upon using a rugby World Cup the following year as an opportunity to rally the entire nation blacks and whites behind the far-fetched prospect of the home team winning it all. Inspirational on the face of it, Clint Eastwood's film has a predictable trajectory, but every scene brims with surprising details that accumulate into a rich fabric of history, cultural impressions and emotion. The names of Eastwood and stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon should propel this absorbing Warner Bros. release to solid returns Stateside, with even better prospects looming in many foreign markets, where an unfamiliar sport and South African politics may pose less of a potential B.O. hurdle.

10years and over Matt Damon has been inspired me in a far way

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.

Night is a metaphor for suffering of any kind. It is also part of a smile and a hyperbole in which the speaker compares the darkness of his suffering to the blackness of a hellish pit stretching from the North Pole to the South Pole. Unconquerable establishes the theme and a link with the title. It is comparing circumstance to a creature with a deadly grip. Alliteration occurs in clutch, circumstance, and cried, in not and nor, and in bludgeoning, bloody, but, and unbowed. Shade is a metaphor for death. Horror suggests that the speaker believes in an afterlife in spite of the seemingly agnostic third line of the first stanza. If there were no afterlife, there could be no horror after death. Menace of the years is a metaphor for advancing age. Strait means narrow, restricted. To escape from “the fell clutch of circumstance” and “bludgeoning of chance,” the speaker must pass through a narrow gate. He believes he can do so in spite of the punishments that fate has allotted him because his iron will refuses to bend.