Chelsea Cronin First Draft

[0:00] Titlecard—Intense acoustic music plays. Over a black background, white text reads “’Invictus’ William Ernest Henley.” 

[0:04] Text appears on screen 

Apartheid- It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. Statement from the dock at the opening of the defense case in the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria, South Africa 20 April 1964

[0:11] Morgan Freeman’s voice from the movie Invictus is heard. He reads the poem’s first verse; text appears on-screen: 

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.

[0:25] Fade into a speech by Nelson Mandela; text appears on-screen: 

the depth of the pain we all carried in our hearts as we saw our country tear itself apart in a terrible conflict, and as we saw it spurned, outlawed and isolated by the peoples of the world.

[0:43] Morgan Freeman’s voice continues to read: 

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloody, but unbowed.

[1:00] A video clip from a documentary plays, showing men fighting each other. A voiceover says:

Their hopes and dreams soon evaporated, and South Africa erupted into the worst violence ever.

[1:10] Freeman’s voice again reads

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.

[1:28] A clip from a documentary on Mandela’s years of incarceration plays. A voiceover says:

Back on the island, Mandela was subjected to a continued regime of humiliation and oppression. But he did not react with anger.

[1:36] Freeman reads again:

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.

[1:52] Another clip of Mandela plays, and he says:

Create hope where there was once only despair.

[1:58] Over a black background, white text reads: 

’Invictus’ inspired Nelson Mandela during the hardest time in his life; the man that most people consider to be on of the most influential and peaceful revolution leaders of our time. He spent 27 years in prison before becoming South Africa’s president and leading his nation peacefully from apartheid to democracy. During his long years of confinement, he came to cherish William Ernest Henley’s poem ‘Invictus.’”

[2:16] Bibliography to end.