“I wrestled a stone, had a fight with a brick. I’m so mean I make medicine sick.” Muhammad Ali.
I AM ALI, emerges in cinemas this week, charting the personal life of professional boxer Muhammad Ali, previously Cassius Clay, from early success to later life. Ali has never been short of cinema attention. Will Smith’s 2001 biopic ALI to the more recent 2009 FACING ALI have both tried to portray the complex and compelling man across his career. It is 1996 WHEN WE WERE KINGS however, an 83 minute long documentary observing the tense build-up to the infamous “Rumble in the Jungle” fight, that provides the most mesmerizing depiction of sporting greatness and the man’s life.
WHEN WE WERE KINGS begins with a montage of the Congolese revolution intercut with images of the civil rights movement in America and the rise of Ali’s career. The scene is set – these three imposing forces colliding together. Outlining the preparation to the fight, the documentary quickly moves to Zaire, Africa, the training rituals, the local surroundings, even the musical entertainment portrayed in poetic detail.
To have interviewed Muhammad Ali must have been one of the truly consuming experiences. Like waiting to go on a rollercoaster x10. You knew something special was going to happen, some insane, beautiful spark of individuality, just not the shape it would take. You’d have no chance of planning towards answers or directing it all. The best you could do is hang on, role with the twists and bends, and prolong it as long as possible. The strength of WHEN WE ARE KINGS is its ability to place the audience in the hot seat, just for a while, opposite the great man and inside the whirlwind.
The image presented is of a man of good intentions utterly at ease.
At the heart of the documentary is a classic heroic tale – a great man facing his greatest challenge. The dramatic stage is set with old footage and interviews from journalists looking back. Ali is the ageing genius, not what he once was. George Foreman, his opponent, is an unstoppable force, overwhelming power that none can withstand. The sheer odds against the old timers are added to and added to until the chance of victory appears impossible but for a miracle. So much so, that the way in which Ali does win (sorry for the spoiler, but come on, you should know this), becomes built to sheer genius. This is the message of the film, what it communicates. But just like Ali himself, this is only half the story. Not what he says, but the way he says it is as important.
Huge amounts of interview footage of Ali interspace the story. Politics, race, poetry, it is all covered by Ali. Not at all of it is pretty – in a very awkward moment, the boxer refers to Chinese music as “Ting Tang Tong”. But all of it has an ingenious sincerity that can often spiral into bizarre surreality. When asked before boarding the plane to Zaire what message he had for the children of the world, Ali begins with the old tripe – staying off drugs and avoiding violence – and then moves seamlessly to extolling the benefits of eating “natural foods” and that “my teeth are rotting … and we need to fight tooth decay.”
The image presented is of a man of good intentions utterly at ease. So at ease with his fighting, he can talk about race. So at ease with race, he can talk about politics. So at ease with politics, he can turn it all into a comedy. He is the master of them all. In an early interview, Ali talks about his fighting style and the “anchor punch”. He explains the punch, beginning deadly serious, talking of speed and accuracy, that a camera frame rate is only one every four milliseconds. It appears utterly scientific and grave. “Four milliseconds”, he says, “four milliseconds from punch to retreat. Now when I went for the punch, everyone in the stadium blinked at exactly the same time. That’s why they missed it.” Just like that everyone is laughing.
The film portrays the same sense of ease in all else it portrays, talking candidly about political leaders, cutting to base jokes delivered by quite clearly stoned reporters, holding very long montages of James Brown. One side note of the story explains native witches and a prophecy that a succubus would give Foreman trembling hands. It’s bizarre and blatantly false. But in the context of Ali and the fight, the frivolity of the narrative fits perfectly. We are the insider, the secret interviewing confidente to a bizarre and strange world: one grounded in the realities and politics in which we live, but also pertains a fairytale drama, an innocent idealism and a funky soundtrack. You begin to forget the fight at times, slipping absorbed into the meanders.
Like the great man, WHEN WE WERE KINGS has plenty to say but doesn’t mind saying it in the way you least expect, or throwing in a joke or two, or just taking a sidetrack for a ten minutes. And as it all washes over you, you better off not fighting it. Just enjoy the experience knowing that you are in the presence of greatness and that Ali will inevitably serve up something peculiarly perfect soon enough.