WHEN WE WERE KINGS (1996) *** It's the fight even non-fight fans have come to love: majestic Muhammed Ali outsmarting bulky and sullen George Foreman in the African jungle. It was a fight that pointed beyond itself in so many ways, easily one of the greatest upsets since man started hittting each other and with a protagonist so profound as to inspire the quest for esoteric insights in his couplet poetry. Why all this? Why, because Muhammed Ali was a man of such magnitude and stature that no less could have possibly been expected of him, even if he was the only one who expected it. He had already stood up to the greatets colonial power on earth, had already arisen out of a racist ghetto to defeat the world. Foreman never had a chance. Like Ali's historic rising, the film mixes fight, politics, and rhythm; and who's to say that they aren't all somehow the same thing? Leon Gast strings together several sets of striking collages, my favorite of which demonstrates that everything in what once was the Congo; Ali, the dictator, the children, the women in the market, white reporters in the hotel-everything moves to the rhythm of James Brown. I think that Norman Mailer did an even better job on the African mysticism in his book, but mainly because he emphasized muntu and kuntu, rather than the succubus. Nearly a quarter of a century after the fact the title begs the question of what era it's referring to. The racial polarization of America and the aleatory close-up facial shot of B. B. King. No element of contemporary culture has been as mistreated and sold out as American blacks (fall into Spike Lee's eyes when he talks about historical memory). Is it a greater crime to rob one of dignity or his hope? Ali doesn't have any empirical knowledge of either losing either one, though all the worldly power that exists made efforts to take one or the other at various times. They won't get you either if you cloak yourself in faith in worthy things, not the least of which must be YOU. Like Ali.
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