“Sport has the power to change the world.”
If the 1980 Miracle on Ice is the United States’ foremost example of this sentiment, then the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup beautifully detailed in “The 16th Man” is certainly tantamount for the nation of South Africa. Except that when Clifford Bestall’s film forced you to examine the actualities of the Springbok story, you realize the scenario playing out in South Africa was for more complex and dramatic than what transpired in Lake Placid, for the simple reason that the political strife surrounding the athletic event came not from a foreign enemy, but from within the nation’s own boundary.
The whole “sports affecting politics” notion can become a little saccharine and hollow when it is inappropriately cited, but here we are told that Nelson Mandela did use the promise of hosting a World Cup tournament as political leverage to curry favor with his white combatants, a savvy and brave move that I was not entirely aware of prior to seeing the film.
Even before the film makes a meal of the ups and downs of the 1995 cup, Bestall goes out of his way to illuminate the viewer to the turbulent political environment in South Africa as it struggled to free itself from the archaic and oppressive apartheid system. Multitudes of negative imagery hammer home the point with alarming effectiveness, from the desolate and barren Upington to the hoards of young white schoolchildren calling for the head of the film’s eponymous extra team member, Mandela.
And it is Mandela who carries the film, despite not being an interview subject. We are so effectively informed as to the impossible situation he put himself in upon his liberation from prison. Whites hated him because he was black, and while blacks revered him, many of them were completely nonplussed about his support the Springboks, a longstanding symbol racial distance and segregation. “The 16th Man” doesn’t spend a tremendous amount of effort trying to explain what in the world could have made Mandela so forward-thinking and magnanimous, but simply allows those who were there and experienced it to disclose that that was simply the man’s nature.
Among the film’s emotional high points is the team’s recollection of being taken to Mandela’s cell on Robben Island, which helped them to understand and contextualize the sort of brutal backwards nature of their government under white rule. This served as an ideal segue into the actual documentation of the tournament. Given that the games were played relatively recently, the video is of a high quality and thus carries a significant amount of weight. The fact that you likely know in the back of your mind that the Springboks will emerge victorious is something of an afterthought, since the story is so thrillingly told.
Bestall makes the particularly bold choice of including the perspective of black political activist Justice Bekebeke, a reluctant viewer of the World Cup who could not reconcile Mandela’s support of the white institution. It would have been very easy and ultimately disingenuous to have painted the story as a scenario in which everyone in South Africa was enraptured with the Springbok victory. Instead, the film allows a hefty portion of its scant 42-minute running time to be dedicated to this one man’s inner turmoil with an event he does not fully understand. Bekebeke comes to realize his foible on his own terms as he stands alone on a street while the rest of the nation celebrates the historic win.
I initially balked at the prospect of the documentary’s inclusion in ESPN’S 30 for 30 series, as Clint Eastwood’s big-budget dramatization Invictus seemed to have cornered the market on this story when it bowed in theaters last fall. But the doc’s intimacy and familiarity with the subject offers a renewed insight and perspective on the 1995 Rugby World Cup, an area in which Invictus was a bit lacking.
The immaculate voice work of Morgan Freeman does the film a lot of favors, naturally, as everything just seems more important whenever Freeman discusses it. Overall Bestall delivered an engrossing, informative and compelling documentary of a story whose lessons will carry relevant lessons for many years to come.
