A seven-hour documentary series, cut into four parts, manages to draw a faithful, authentic and exhaustive portrait of the triple world champion. By not forgetting its share of shadow.
by
How to summarize muhammad (and not mohammed, because it was American) Ali? How to condense the fate of such a complex and fascinating man? Many documentary learners have tried the exercise, so dangerous. A number have broken their teeth. Perhaps simply because it is impossible to reduce Ali’s exceptional path in one movie.
The biggest boxer of all times deserves to be attracted. It is the bias taken from Ken Burns, customary of very feature films (he did the Civil War, where he tells in eleven o’clock the four years of the Civil War). With its four-party documentary series of a total of seven hours, soberly entitled Mohammed Ali, Ken Burns offers a great immersion in the life of the champion. It was well necessary this monumental format to draw a faithful, authentic and comprehensive portrait of the heavyweight.
Fulgent ascent
Through fabulous archives, some unpublished, and many interviews – two of the girls of Ali, Rasheda and Hana, their mothers, the very controversial promoter Don King, or the boxer Larry Holmes … -, the Director manages to explore with great humanity every facet of the triple world champion. Patiently, so, but still rhythmically and dynamically, it unfolds the story of the one who was, as norman mailer writes, “the most perfect embodiment of the spirit of the XX century “.
Originally, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, a kid from the black lower middle class, originally from Louisville, Kentucky. The first part of the documentary follows the dazzling ascension of the young man, already big and insolent, towards the top of the professional boxing: an exciting piece of life on which most of the movies dedicated to Ali always spend a little too quickly.
Then, of course, the dancer boxer, the heavy weight that dazzles as much by his incredible leg game only by the speed of his directs on the left steady. The athlete out of norm, the genius of the noble art that “floats like a butterfly and sticks like a bee”. On a purely sporting level, boxing lovers will be filled by the many images of fighting, including the least known to the general public.
One of the great strengths of this documentary is to insist on the personal and political commitments of the boxer. Because his greatest fights, the “field” led them outside the rings. Converted to Islam, the one who will now be known as Muhammad Ali will refuse, in the name of his faith, his incorporation for the Vietnam War and will be deprived of his world titles. Honni for years by a wide fringe of white and Christian America, Ali has never deviated from its beliefs. Herald of the Black Power, he became a global symbol of freedom and courage.
Revolutionary pioneer, charismatic and flamboyant, Ali also had his share of shadow, that the film does not forget to evoke: his multiple infidelities, the moment he turned his back to his friend Malcolm X, his cruelty Assumed when he humbled his opponents with great trash-talking reinforcement (“verbal provocation”), his oversized ego … Decidedly, Ken Burns can say everything and thus makes the planetary icon all the more.