Why didn’t they put that in the movie?

I am now officially NOT a fan of the movie, Invictus! I admit that, apart from the appalling rugby scenes and the absence of humorous banter (which I know to be common among South Africans), I did enjoy the movie. Then I read the book!

This morning I sat in bed in a Lagos hotel and finished the chapter where the SA rugby team learned to sing the new national anthem (which the author fails to point out is a hymn written by a Methodist minister). The movie showed the captain, Francois Pienaar, asking his team to learn the national anthem in Xhosa, and them objecting strongly. The reality was quite different. Why did Hollywood miss this part?

Anne Munnik was about to wrap up the lessons when the team’s three largest players, Kobus Wiese, Hannes Strydom, and Balie Swart, made a request: could they sing the song one more time, just the three of the? “I said, ‘Of curse!’ And then they began, like three giant choirboys, softly at first, rising, rising to the high notes. They sang it so, so beautifully! The other players just stood there with the mouths open. No laughing, no jokes! They just stood and stared.”

For the big men, singing this song had the power of an epiphany. “That was my innocent ignorance shattered!” Wiese exclaimed. “When I learnt the words of that song, doors opened for me. Ever since then, when I hear a whole group of black people sing “Nkosi Sikele,’ it’s like, sunning man. It’s so beautiful.”

Truth  has a way of shattering our innocent ignorance. Hollywood has a way of twisting things to make them look good or the story sell. I am of the school that truth is better than fiction. One ounce of truth dispels a ton of error. The things I see each day–the heroics of marketplace people doing the right things for the right reasons–do not sit well with Hollywood’s spin on bad business, but they sit right with me. When will we see the real story of the redemptive work of business in a movie?