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Muhammad Ali. There was a time when he was the most well-known face, the most famous man in the world. Ali was so much more than a boxer, so much more than a star athlete, so much more than a cult of personality that even now, it is hard to gauge just what his impact on American culture -- and on the world -- has been. Muhammad Ali wasn’t just a celebrity. He was Cataclysmic Change personified in one man; he was the Future stepping into a ring and strapping gloves on to do battle with the Now; he was, in the words of one reporter, “the child of the gods”.
| As Ali was more than a sports star so When We Were Kings is so much more than a documentary of a famous boxing match. The film is, in fact, a testament to a man becoming the myth of Muhammad Ali. As such, it seems only fitting that the movie had to go through so much trial and tribulation just to exist at all. Twenty years in the making, as they say, When We Were Kings was initially intended to be a concert documentary. In his first stab at becoming a power broker in the world of professional boxing, the promoter, Don King, wanted to stage not just a big fight but a major cultural event. To this end he turned to kleptocrat dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the ruler of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mobutu put up the ten million dollars to entice then heavyweight champ, George Foreman into taking on the dynamic superstar Ali in Zaire in the hopes of introducing his nation to the world stage. But King didn’t stop there. He also hoped to stage a “Black Woodstock” – a concert where some of the greatest African and African-American musicians in the world would come together and stage a musical expression of Black solidarity. King then hired the young documentary film maker, Leon Gast, to record the auspicious event. There couldn’t have been a crazier assignment: the newly “independent” Zaire, the petty dictator Mobutu, the smooth criminal, Don King, the king of soul, James Brown, Miriam Makeba, B.B. King, the sullen and powerful champion, George Foreman and the Ali circus with its ultimately charismatic ringleader. On top of all the inherent logistic hurdles of staging such an event that had to be overcome in the middle of training Foreman is accidentally injured by a sparring partner and the fight has to be postponed for six weeks. Gast wisely put the extra time to good use and did what any smart, young director might do. He pointed his camera at Muhammad Ali. Ali training, Ali talking (constantly), Ali intermingling with the Congolese people (lovingly), Ali being Ali…and he ended up with incomparable behind-the-scenes footage of a legend in the making.
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Eventually, the fight goes off as planned and the film is wrapped and then…nothing. For years. The footage Gast shot became mired in a swamp of legalities, paperwork and bureaucracy. Persevering, saving the footage, shaping it, and creating an award winning documentary out of it was an epic undertaking in and of itself. Luckily, the subject matter more than merited it. It is impossible to define Ali in this film. Calling him charismatic is like calling the Pacific Ocean a large body of water. He is huge. Everybody else in the film pales next to him. In one of the quieter, more telling moments in the film, the Congolese actor, Malik Bowen speaks of how to the Africans Ali is “a real person, genuine” – in spite of the fact that Ali was an American-born, millionaire sports superstar. This connection, this extraordinary empathy that Ali generates is the key to his magic. He is welcomed to Zaire as a king making his epic return over the oceans back to his homeland. With his mountainous charm, wit and blazing confidence the metaphor makes stunning sense. Ali himself speaks constantly in historical terms, in world terms, his awareness and willingness to be a fulcrum for Pan African culture is exhilarating, intoxicating. Whether he’s telling young kids back home to make sure they brush their teeth or characterizing himself as a vessel of God from which he gains the strength to achieve the unachievable, you can’t help but believe him – because he’s telling the truth. Not just any truth, his truth, a king’s truth for his people. It makes him so much more than a celebrity. (Can you imagine Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan speaking as ferociously about Black pride – or anything that wasn’t a product they were selling -- as Ali does here?) This courage, this genuine independence of spirit, this heart is something we don’t see in sports, we don’t see in our religious leaders and we certainly don’t see in politics any more.
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