When We Were Kings (1996) – 3/5

For me this one does not take the crown or at least not the biggest one

„When We Were Kings“ is a documentary from the United States of America that is almost entirely in the English language. It is not a long film at all, stays a couple minutes under the 1.5-hour mark and the director is Leon Gast and he scored a great deal of awards attention with it. He died not too long ago, in 2021, and made the film together with David Sonenberg. These two collaborated already in the mid1970s, so already more than 20 years before this film here that is now almost 30 years old. Ad that older film I am referring to also had a connection with Black people in/and Africa, so they stayed with this subject for a long time, even if the focus here is on sports and back then, 50 years ago, it was on music. In a way, this film crowned the duo’s careers because they won the two most prestigious critics awards, scored with the LA Film Critics circle too and succeeded at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. They weren’t nominated for a Golden Globe and at the DGA Award, the film also „only“ scored a nomination in the documentary category and did not win, but I am sure that Gast and Sonenberg happily accepted this in the face of the movie winning the Oscar and thus being named the best documentary of the year. I am not sure if I would go so far, but it was a decent watch when I saw this film on the occasion of a film series on Black America. It was one of not too many documentaries that were shown, so this shows that the film is far from forgotten now so many years later and also with Muhammed Ali dead. He is the protagonist in this film and if you didn’t know already before watching (and I kinda feel a few in my screening actually didn’t), then this is about his big return and triumph over the reigning world champion George Foreman.

The fight was held in Zaire, which made things more special and complicated at the same time. Freeman suffered an injury briefly before the fight, which put the battle at risk, but eventually it was merely a delay and not a cancellation. Surely Foreman in retrospective would have chosen a cancellation if he could turn back the hands of time. He is still alive by the way, but I felt a bit sorry for him when it is said at the end that the loss in this fight with Ali resulted in him suffering from depression for several years and that he was probably never the same man again afterwards. The same athlete. I guess most people who watch this were in favor of Ali and liked him more and wanted him to win, but I cannot say this was true for me. The statement about how Africans kept something essential inside of them that Black Americans had lost may sound a bit deep and meaningful, but if you look really closely there, you could also see it way more critical and in a derogatory manner towards Black Americans. Why insult them for wanting a better life? They had it difficult enough already anyway during times like these back then in America where racism and discrimination were still a nationwide issue and not just a mostly fictitious concept as it is in the 2020s That is another story though. Of course, you could also wonder why Ali would not live a life in Africa away from stardom if he said things like these. So yeah, he was definitely a huge pretender. Maybe the biggest in sports history. I must say I do not find him very likable at all, but this is of course personal perception. Maybe you can find criticism in Foreman’s approach too how he leaves the plane with a certain dog breed that discriminates the locals there, but I am generally in favor of the quieter type of athlete and this is no exception here. I mean the irony was priceless when Ali said something along the lines of how Foreman talks too much. I surely would have preferred a different outcome of the fight.

There are other inclusions that I was not too big on, like how Ali acts as if he is one of the locals there, also with these chants we hear on a few occasions, or also there is one scene in which he pretends as if Foreman was lying on the ground before him and Ali was stomping on him. The one thing you have to say is that Ali won the fight probably fair and square, no matter if his rope-a-dope was just staged or if he was really struggling with Foreman in the earlier rounds when the latter still had more energy. If it was pretense, then it is not the nicest approach either to basically act there in the ring, but it nothing that is illegal, so I cannot say anything negative there. I still liked it when the film also focused a bit more on Foreman, like when we find out about his practice and how hard he was hitting there, even if this was only used in a way to elaborate on how Ali completely ignored this and did not look at what Foreman did there when he came to practice himself. There is also another key difference as we see how Ali was almost getting bullied and pushed around by his sparring partners and really did not go all-in there, but focused on his weaknesses instead. So you will surely learn a bit about the boxing world back then. Admittedly, even if I dislike Ali, I must say that here and there his gloating was also on the funny side. Everybody in the room during my screening was laughing for example when very early on he was talking about switching off the light in the bedroom and how he is so fast that he is in bed before the light is actually off. That was a bit funny, not gonna lie. I give him that. But for every somewhat entertaining statement from Ali, there were three where I just found him unlikable. The best example (or worst character-wise) is also the scene in the ring immediately before the fight begins when we see the two look each other in the eye and Ali starts trash-talking like crazy there while Foreman is really calm and relaxed or at least seems like it.

On a completely different note, I am also not a huge fan of the title. I don’t see a really close connection to the contents here and maybe hundred titles would have been more fitting to briefly summarize the contents of the story here. Of course, with a little interpretation, you will find sense there like everywhere, but I am not even gonna go for it. I stated earlier that it is not a particularly long film and this is certainly correct and still they included some stuff away from the upcoming fight that had only a vague connection to Ali and Foreman. One example would be when there is talk about the man who was the ruler of Zaire/Congo back then and how he was apparently really gruesome. And cautious at the same time. He did a great deal of preparation for the fight, paid a lot of money to get the fight too take place in his country, money that could have been used differently for sure to benefit his people, but yeah. In terms of the aforementioned preparation, there is an anecdote where we cannot be sure if it was really the truth, but that he collected something like 10,000 of the country’s worst criminals, not including himself, and having 100 of them randomly killed to show the rest that he can kill anybody anytime if they decide to cause trouble when the fight takes place. So it was probably pretty safe for the foreign journalists and reports who came to Zaire on the occasion of the event. It would not have been too safe for him maybe though and this is what I was referring to when I mentioned the cautious because he was nowhere to be seen during the big night and watched the fight then on television apparently. And not directly where it took place. I was curious by the way what happened to some of the people who had seats so close to the ring. I guess that some of them may still be alive today. But we will never know. I am sure though that they never regretted going to see the fight and maybe even flying from America to Africa to do so.

Here and there, we also find out a bit about the local population, but yeah nothing too positive you can say there with crime rates and poverty, even if it was probably a bit special for them and maybe even a once-in-a-lifetime occasion to have an event like this take place where they live. On one occasion, it was said that when Foreman stepped out of the plane, some were surprised that he was Black too because it was rather Ali who they perceived as African and Foreman they saw as totally American, thus he had to be White. Oh well. Maybe just an exaggeration. If we go back to Ali, there is of course also a minor mention/inclusion of the reason why he changed his name and what religion he was joining in the process or I could also say which group he was joining. This is not what the film is about at its center, however, so there was not too much elaboration on that. Still, it rang familiar to me because I was the movie „Malcolm X“ a day or two earlier and we understand that Ali was part of the group that Malcolm made popular and that eventually cost him his life, but yeah it is somewhat fitting I assume. It is difficult to accept Ali’s statements linked to peace and tolerance if we look at how aggressively extroverted he is on other occasions. There we are back at my description from early on how Ali is definitely a great pretender and from my perspective not in a positive light at all. I am sure this is not what the filmmakers had in mind when they made this documentary. They wanted people to appreciate and maybe even admire Ali, but the only perspective where I can do this from is the perspective of seeing him as an athlete. But as this is a sports movie, this is the most important thing anyway, so I give the overall outcome a thumbs-up and positive recommendation here, even if I must say that the Oscar win and probably some of the others too are certainly on the exaggerated side. But yeah, „When We Were Kings“ is worth watching. Once is enough though. That is all then. Finally, it can be said that you will also learn a bit about Don King here and Spike Lee is also part of this, which is not helping in my case. Another parallel to the Malcolm X movie from four years earlier.