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Well, this is a terrific little documentary.
The "We" of the title seems to suggest the point of view that this was a cultural high point for black America to embrace, but there's enough here to show anybody paying attention how much bullshit and exploitation were happening as well. A lot of the event organizers are either deliberately conniving (Don King), stoned and enjoying the ride (concert promoters Stuart Levine and Lloyd Price), or possibly both. King, among others, can sometimes talk sense, but then switch to complete (and comic) obfuscation when asked an uncofomrtable question, such as when George Plimpton asks him why he doesn't, if this event is about uplifiting African-Americans, consider putting some of the money aside for develomental programs back in the states.
The movie's eloquence, aside from the rich period footage, comes from the fact that several of the talking heads looking back were reporters who covered the fight --- Thomas Hauser, Norman Mailer, Plimpton. Despite boxing's brutatlity --- or perhaps because of it --- it's inspired some of the best sportswriting you'll ever read, as scribes try to peer through the exploitation and tragedy and perseverance to find human meaning and metaphor.
What keeps me from giving it any higher a rating isn't because of what it is, but what it isn't. Very few of the principles are included in the latter-day interviews. Ali --- who could still express himself well enough in 1996 if you had the patience to hear him out --- is missing, as are Foreman and King. Larry Holmes --- a great champion himself and Ali's then-sparring partner, and who may have been the key to the whole rope-a-dope strategy --- doesn't speak, and neither do any of Ali's surviving cornermen, who might have let us know whether they were clued in at all to Ali's strategy.
The other disappointing absence is Foreman. While this is about the whole fight, only about 20% of the time is spent on the then-champ. What little we are shown of him allows him as dignified, respectful, and a little embarassed at being caught up in the Ali self-publicity machine --- cast as Goliath by a loudmouth populist David. He briefly and confusedly wonders at the hero worship the Zaire citizens are laying on Ali, saying --- not bitterly --- that he's blacker than Ali, an assertion supported by shots of Ali's light-skinned mother. Foreman had recast himself by 1996 from the distant raging brute into one of the most delightful and engaging men in US public life, but his memories of this strange chapter don't appear.
What it is though, is a thoroughly engrossing mindtrip from the seventies. The moment the fighters enter the ring, I'm half thinking that this can hardly be a sanctioned fight, as it's all so damned freaky. As if boxing has standards.
I was triggered to rent this baby because another documentary (Soul Power) was recently released about the accompanying concert. A lot of the concert footage appears here --- B.B. King, James Brown, and the Spinners (hey, Greg, the Spinners!) among others. They mostly ignore the African musicians --- including highly respected legends like Miram Makeba (then only recently seperated from Stokley Carmichael) --- except to portray them as mysterious and exotic and strange.
It only takes a minute, girl, to put this in your Netflix queue.
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