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M O V I E S "When We Were Kings"
Directed by Taylor Hackford & Leon Gast
![[WHEN WE WERE KINGS]](kings970214t2.gif)
A new documentary captures the charisma
and nobility of Muhammad Ali.
"FOR HE IS THE PRINCE OF HEAVEN -- SO SAYS THE SILENCE AROUND HIS BODY WHEN HE IS LUMINOUS." The world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who recognize immediately what Norman Mailer means in the above quote about Muhammad Ali, and those who respond, "Huh?" And I've got bad news for everyone in the latter camp -- you're outnumbered. It's not sentiment or wishful thinking to say that Muhammad Ali has become one of the truly loved people in American public life. But it's a remarkable achievement when you consider that this was a man who, in the '60s, provoked hatred and outright fear in many white Americans. You could say that Ali's diminished physical capacity plays on American sentimentality, or that it's easy for America to love Ali when he no longer poses a perceived threat to its sensibilities. But that strikes me as cheap cynicism. I prefer to think that the public's affection for Ali shows the ability of people to change. Ali has never softened his views on race or his religious commitment to Islam, never apologized for refusing to serve in Vietnam. And perhaps in that, as well as in his fighting career and his unembarrassed public life with Parkinson's Syndrome, people see an embodiment of qualities -- individualism, courage, conviction and perseverance -- that would sound clichéd if Ali didn't validate each one. There has come to be a symbiotic relationship between Ali and the public. Watching a crowd come to see him at a Boston book signing last week, I couldn't shake the impression that people feel ennobled by the mere fact of him, or that he seems grander because of the affection he arouses. "You can't use logic when you talk about Muhammad Ali," Jim Brown once said, and love is rarely logical. You can list the components of Ali's attractiveness -- his physical beauty, wit, charisma -- without getting at the mysterious interplay of those things. At its best, "When We Were Kings," the documentary about Ali's 1974 championship bout with George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire ("The Rumble in the Jungle"), suggests some of that interplay. "When We Were Kings," which was put together by Taylor Hackford and Leon Gast, is a patchy movie that fails to rise to the grace and articulation of its main attraction. But it has Ali, and when he's on-screen, that's enough. The fight with Foreman came about from a combination of Don King's bid to become a big-time promoter and Zairean President Mobutu Sese Soko's desire to promote his newly independent country (formerly the Belgian Congo). King got Mobutu to put up $10 million of Zaire's scant finances ($5 million per fighter), and also staged a music festival to accompany the bout. Ali's biographer, Thomas Hauser, wryly observes, "Countries go to war to get their names on the map and wars cost more than 10 million dollars." The conception of the fight was a near-genius marriage of PR and symbolism. Ali, the most outspoken black athlete ever, a man who had suffered for his views (unconstitutionally, as the Supreme Court later ruled), would journey to Africa, where he would be received as a king come to recapture his throne. To most observers, that played as a fantasy that didn't have a prayer of coming true. Norman Mailer and George Plimpton (who were both interviewed for the film) and Howard Cosell (in commentary at the time of the fight) touch on the fear they imagined Ali felt facing Foreman, who had taken the heavyweight title the year before by administering a brutal beating to Joe Frazier. But as they talk, what comes through is their fear. They feared that they were going to see the man who had practiced boxing at its highest level destroyed by the sport's most basic element: brute force. The George Foreman of "When We Were Kings" isn't the affable bald fellow you see on TV hawking potato chips and his "Knock Out the Fat Grilling Machine." With a wild spume of hair, a sullen, laconic, mean look and no discernible sense of humor, Foreman is a scary -- and inscrutable -- presence. When a French TV reporter asks Foreman what he will do if he loses the fight, he fixes the guy with a stare and keeps repeating, "I beg your pardon?" as if he'd like to crush every bone in the fellow's body. Comparing Foreman to Sonny Liston, Ali jokes that beating Foreman will let him leave boxing as he entered, "beating a big, bad monster who knocks out everybody and no one can whup him." But Plimpton notes that Ali, whose workouts were scheduled after Foreman's in the same gym, would not look at Foreman hitting the heavy bag with blows so hard that Foreman's trainer was nearly lifted off his feet. Taylor and Gast have included a bunch of footage from the music festival that could easily have been cut. And while the movie makes no bones about depicting Mobutu as a tyrant, it could stand some more background on the means he employed to get into power. But every time the picture bogs down, Ali and his antics perk things up. You see him at a press conference spouting off his hilarious doggerel poetry, leading Zairians in a chant of "Ali, boma ye!" ("Ali, kill him!") and joking cruelly at Foreman's expense. Pacing the ring during a workout, he rails at the assembled reporters, "The man's in trouble, the man is scared. He's in my country to start with," a cutting swipe, intimating that Foreman isn't black. Then, when the laughter has died down, he asks, "Want me to show you who's in my country?" He leads the assembled fans in a chant of "Ali, boma ye!" Then, referring to the hoards who will assemble to see the fight, crows, "Can you picture 100,000? Can you picture 100,000!!?" What has kept Ali's performances outside the ring from being dismissed as mere boasting are his performances inside the ring. "When We Were Kings" climaxes with the Ali-Foreman bout. I don't imagine that anyone who's not a fight fan will have their mind changed about boxing by this sequence. But anyone who sees it and still thinks that the sport is two guys beating each other up just ain't paying attention. Mailer (at his best throughout, articulate and entertaining) deserves much of the credit for elucidating what's going on. His comments bring out the brilliance of Ali's strategy. Ali upset Foreman from the beginning, first by delivering the supreme insult of hitting Foreman with a dozen right-hand leads. A right-hand lead is a punch that, because it has to travel farther than a left, gives your opponent time to see it coming. Ali's repeated successful use of it was a taunt, no less than his remarks (according to Mailer) to Foreman: "You disappoint me, George. I thought you'd hit harder than that." Joyce Carol Oates has said that the tragedy of Ali's career was that -- his peak fighting years stolen from him by his battle with the government over the draft -- he found upon his return that even though his legs weren't what they were, he could take a punch. Realizing that Foreman was the more powerful puncher, Ali went to the ropes, allowing himself to be hit again and again. The movie shows us the result: By the end of the fifth round, Foreman is punched out, landing blows like a drunk trying to fit his key in the door. Ali, coming alive with the cunning of a cat that's allowed its prey to think it has the upper hand, moves in and finishes Foreman off. I think the key to why so many of us, and particularly so many writers, are stunned by Ali lies in this performance. He is one of the most perfect unions of thought and action anyone has ever seen. The conceptual beauty of his victory over Foreman is indistinguishable from the beauty of its execution. Athletes think with their bodies. Physically, Ali was able to express not just strength, but more intelligence and wit than any athlete ever has. The movie ends with Plimpton relating a story about Ali delivering a commencement address at Harvard. Responding to the cry, "Give us a poem!" Ali delivers two words: "Me. Oui!" But the movie has already made a stronger case for him as a poet in the ring. And it's poets who touch people more than kings. Feb. 14, 1997 Charles Taylor is a regular contributor to Salon. Read the soundtrack review. A R C H I V E S Previous 5 reviews: "Sling Blade" By Dwight Garner (2/07/97) |
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