When you say you're going to see a movie about Muhammad Ali, people go, "Cool!" When you say you're going to see a documentary about the legendary fighter, their eyes glaze over in anticipated boredom. Documentaries, for most of the mainstream moviegoing public, mean information, facts, authoritative voiceover, journalism on celluloid-it's a form that harkens back to the stilted "human development" reels we all watched in fifth grade.
At the heart of the project of a documentary lies a desire to capture the truth of a reality on film, to capture a time and place in a medium that can take you through the sights and sounds of another person or another time. All of this is quite intellectual, but to most people, the traits of the documentary do not equate into a product that can move you. Yet some documentaries achieve a frisson of electricity by their very realist aesthetic, recording raw humanity without a studio's glossy perfection. When We Were Kings, this year's Oscar winner for Best Documentary on a Long Subject, is an example of a documentary that not only informs, but emotes, mostly by capturing the magnetic charisma of Muhammad Ali nearing the peak of his power as a cultural figure.
Ostensibly, the film is about the legendary boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, the "Rumble in the Jungle." Scheduled for September 25, 1974, the fight was masterminded by an ex-con-turned-promoter, Don King, who brought together the two fighters with an offer of $5 million each. Despite his shrewdness and intelligence, King lacked the funds to back his offer up. The money came from then military dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, who offered the money if King would hold his fight in Africa. Needless to say, King organized an Event, a fight accompanied by a huge showcase of music with African and American artists. Four days before the fight, the promoters announced a six-week delay for Foreman's sparring injuries to heal; Mobutu then refused to allow the fighters to leave the country; and Ali took in Zaire.
Much of the drama of When We Were Kings comes from watching the events build, fall and reconstruct, and the pacing of the film takes the viewer along as the action unfolds. Intersected with astute, well-edited interview commentary from the journalists who covered the event, Norman Mailer and George Plimpton, as well as Spike Lee, the film teases out subtleties that point to the cultural complexities of the event. The film is more than a retelling of an event in sports history-it's an indelible photograph of a legend at his most incandescent and compelling. It's a chapter in the history of black consciousness. It's a portrait of one small nation's political turbulence. It's a slice of the tumultuous, questioning culture of the times.
While the fight itself is the centerpiece of the film, looping together and linking the different threads of subject matter, the documentary captures nuances of a history that we bathe, in our present time, in a haze of nostalgia or romanticization. At center stage of the documentary is, of course, Muhammad Ali. While many of us have only heard of Ali and his legendary persona, the film offers a concentrated glimpse of his wit, grace, charm and effervescence. Gast establishes Ali's stakes before the fight-his previous meteoric rise to championships, his controversial association with the Nation of Islam, his defiance of the government draft for Vietnam and the subsequent stripping of his championship, and the rebuilding of his career. Ali is the underdog of the fight, but what a charismatic underdog-the camera's close-ups hugs his bucolic, expressive face, capturing every showstopping nuance of his expressions. Ali's in-your-face interview style-his good-natured boasting, witty, outspoken banter and famous extemporaneous, off-the-cuff poems-also captures his vitality. Surrounding this portrait is archival footage and fight clips that undercut this radiant display of confidence by speculating on the apparent decline of his boxing career. Commentary from Mailer and Plimpton fleshes out the doubts surrounding Ali and hint at the vulnerability underneath Ali's bravado.
Undercutting Ali's persona most of all is the formidable portrayal of Foreman. Without being demonized, Foreman, a huge ox of a man, lurks as the dark challenge to overcome for Ali. Undemonstrative, intimidating, the Foreman of the film is a marked contrast to the affable father of five little George Foremans we see today. Instead a sequence of Foreman inexorably, powerfully slugging a dent into a punching bag epitomizes the past Foreman persona: a injury-inflicting machine whose brawny physical prowess speaks louder than his laconic, confrontational comments.
The contrast between Ali and Foreman provides another angle on the documentary, one that comes from the Africans' perception of the two sports figures. Foreman was taken uneasily by the people of Zaire, who perceived him as just another first-world American. The camera captures his reception at the airport, with a small crowd more curious that celebratory in their reception.
Ali, on the other hand, felt differently about his trip to Africa, and Zaireans felt very differently about him. Because of his politically charged background, most of the people of Zaire saw Ali favorably in his role as an agitator, as a "child of the United States" who stood up to his government when they attempted to draft him in a war against a Third World country that never personally persecuted him. Their immediate embrace of Ali was a homecoming for the fighter, welcomed like a son coming back home.
Ali felt the same, and took the six weeks in the interim between the delay and the fight to take in the country of Zaire. The film explores Ali's cultural awakening, capturing his thoughts with various interviews that showcase how Ali is not just an entertainer or a sportsman, but a political speaker, as well. The film captures a moment when black Americans reconnected with their heritage and their link to Africa with Ali.
The actual rumble itself shifts the film from a swirl of social history and personality study into a remarkable analysis of the complexity and strange beauty of boxing itself. Hearing Plimpton and Mailer dissect the techniques of the fighters over the actual, slowed-down footage of the fight itself takes the viewer into the dynamics of watching the sequence. It's deft, emotional storytelling, even though we know the outcome. It's the execution of the fight that fascinates, and the layering of visuals with sound provide a window that hints at what it was like to watch the fight way back in 1974.
The making of the film was a saga within itself. Originally meant to capture the music festival that surrounded the fight, When We Were Kings was 23 years in the making. Director Leon Gast was commissioned by King to capture the music festival, but during the six-week delay, found himself following Ali. Deciding that he would shoot everything, Gast eventually shot 300,000 feet of film and returned to the U.S. absolutely broke and unable to process and edit the film. Over the next couple of years, he struck deals with various NYC labs to process the footage and took nearly 15 years to pay off his lab fees.
In 1989, Gast was offered $1 from Island Records exec Chris Blackwell (who had the genius to sign U2 to his then-independent label) to buy his footage. Eventually, he and his producer decided to helm the production themselves, and over the next six years, put together 8 different versions of the film.
After shaping their raw footage into a story, they decided to focus on Ali and acquired archival footage and fight photography. When they completed the film in 1995, they shot new interview footage and edited within the body of the work.
The result is a remarkable document about a time, a world and a man all at once. Ali's recent public appearances at the Olympics and the Oscars become even more moving when we realize the wonderful charisma and intelligence lurking underneath the immobile face of Parkinson's syndrome. Ali's magic is a rarity, and When We Were Kings captures a great man at the peak of his powers.
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