Midway though Leon Gast’s “When We Were Kings,” last year’s most honored documentary film, Spike Lee laments on camera that the younger generation — disgracefully, in his opinion — has forgotten or never learned of world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. Lee’s expression is weary, his tone exasperated. Listening to him, you think: “Can he be right? How can this be possible? How can anyone not know or have forgotten Muhammad Ali?”
Forget that speed, power, calculation and grace in the ring? That bubbling, ferocious wit outside? That unique sense of drama and fun? That fearless self-expression and glorious self-promotion? That strange blend of gentleness and menace? That Louisville lip? Impossible. If any sports figure of any era deserves “unforgettable,” it has to be Ali.
“When We Were Kings” does its considerable best to right that wrong. An amazingly enjoyable documentary record of the epic “Rumble in the Jungle” on Sept. 25, 1974 — when the “aging” 32-year-old Ali stunned the experts and regained his championship by knocking out a seemingly impregnable opponent, 25-year-old champ George Foreman — it’s a fascinating and moving record of a great fight and two great fighters, of an extraordinary event and a bizarre cast of characters. And of one figure, Ali, who transcends it all. The fight and accompanying ballyhoo were the stuff of legends and larceny. And director Leon Gast seems to catch almost everything. The backstage maneuvers. The rocking music festival — organized to benefit the fight — with James Brown, B.B. King (and Lucille) and Miriam Makeba. The exact instant when Foreman receives the head-gash that delayed the bout for a fateful six weeks. The Shakespeare-studded gab of Eraser-headed promoter Don King.
At the center of it all is Ali, born to the boxing ring and spotlight as some are born to sweet delight or endless night.
We watch him training, joking, orating, poeticizing (“Me? Whee!”) and working the crowd. He pummels at the camera, dances in the sparring ring (with the young Larry Holmes), floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee. Using his formidable comic, forensic and psyche-out skills, we see him win over a country, until by the time he enters the ring against Foreman, he has the entire stadium crowd and almost all of Zaire outside shouting “Ali! Bomaye!” (“Ali! Kill him!”)
It was a stadium, as writer and “Kings” interviewee Norman Mailer explains, that was built over a prison, with a floor once covered with blood. It was in a country run by a bespectacled dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, who had solved his crime problem in time for the fight by having his police force kill 100 known criminals at random, driving the rest of them underground and keeping the streets safe for the world’s media.
And it was 4 o’clock in the morning, a time arranged to accommodate American TV. History was in the ring.
Ali, stripped of his first heavyweight crown (won at 22) after he refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War, had won back his fighting rights from the Supreme Court in 1970, then battled back rockily to this title match. He was taking on a younger and stronger man whose stony blows could put a hole in the big punching bag. A man who had demolished opponents Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, both of whom had beaten Ali. Foreman, in the opinion of the assembled sports writers — and broadcaster and polysyllabic Ali foil Howard Cosell — was unbeatable. By anyone.
After one round of all-out combat, Mailer recalls, there came the defining moment, which we watch. The Aquarian novelist says he saw Ali registering rare fear in his corner, then digging into himself for whatever he needed to outlast and outwit a harder and scarier opponent. To rope-a-dope, bewilder and tire him out. Which he did. “What a man!” remarks Mailer’s patrician pal, writer George Plimpton, giving the movie its last words. You can only agree.
“When We Were Kings” tells three stories at once: the tale of the fight and festival, Ali’s history, and the whole thing in today’s perspective — from Lee, Plimpton, Mailer, Ali biographer Thomas Hauser and Zaire’s Malik Bowens. Mailer, especially, gives “Kings” its special flavor. Mellow and eloquent, waggish and serenely penetrating, tart and tough as an old Irish cop, he takes us through vales of hype and anxiety to a luminous knockout punch.
There’s a fascinating backstage story, too, about “When We Were Kings,” a film that took two months to shoot and 22 years to edit. Gast (“Hell’s Angels Forever!”) was hired to shoot a documentary on the music but then found himself beached when Mobutu ordered the festival (whose profits were supposed to supply the film’s completion money) made free.
During the movie’s long and rambling course since then, with Gast and lawyer-producer David Sonenberg nurturing it through decades of uncertainty, they finally met director Taylor Hackford (“Against All Odds”). Hackford viewed the footage, hit on the idea of adding interviews, filmed them himself and edited them into the movie.
The result is incredible. I would say that “Kings” misses greatness only by not including two encounters we most want to see: with the older Ali (now hobbled by Parkinson’s Disease) and the older Foreman. Foreman, who evolved from a truculent young slugger into an entirely different person — the avuncular and well-loved old preacher-fighter-trencherman we know today — could have supplied priceless perspective. And just a smile or a word from Ali, another on-camera reunion with his old opponent, would have given the movie a soulful closure.
But that may be all it’s missing. As entertainment, “When We Were Kings” is fantastic. As music, it’s joyous. As history, it’s keen. As boxing, it’s Homer’s Iliad and Satchmo’s “West End Blues” in 10 rounds. It was worth a 22-year wait. Watch this movie with gusto; you’ll never see its like again. Or see anyone again like the unforgettable young Muhammad Ali, in his shining, poetry-spouting, rope-a-doping, floating, stinging, unconquerable prime.
”WHEN WE WERE KINGS”
(star) (star) (star) (star)
Directed by Leon Gast; photographed by Maryse Alberti, Paul Goldsmith, Kevin Keating, Albert Maysles, Roderick Young; edited by Gast, Taylor Hackford, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Keith Robinson; music by James Brown, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba, The Fugees, others; with Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Don King, Spike Lee, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton; interviews directed by Hackford; produced by David Sonenberg, Gast, Hackford. A Gramercy release; opens Friday at Pipers Alley. Running time: 1:25. MPAA rating: PG.
