The History & Setting and How It Appears in the Film

THE HISTORY & SETTING AND HOW IT APPEARS IN THE FILM

Zaire’s (as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was then known) history is rarely dealt with explicitly in ‘When we were Kings’ - the film is not simply a documentary about the country and its history. It addresses broader issues of politics, personality and black identity. However, the filmmakers do address these issues indirectly using a number of devices, often contrasting the images with the soundtrack, for example.

Fight Promoter, Don King, announced the contest between Ali and Foreman at a Press Conference at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel in September 1974.

King had contracted the two fighters on the understanding that each would receive $5m for the fight. Despite both the US and the UK being keen to stage the event, only Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko was prepared to put up the requisite prize money.

Testimony and opinion

Author and journalist Norman Mailer likens President Mobutu of Zaire to Stalin (‘who are the poor women who are associated with this fellow?), whilst the images on screen are of laughing women dancing at a rally in Mobutu’s honour.

Kinshasa Stadium, in Zaire's capital, where the fight was to be held, had a capacity of 100,000 people. As the film shows the international press being shown around the stadium by Mobutu and his entourage, Mailer’s voice-over reveals that (rather like in Pinochet’s Chile) there were secret detention cells beneath the stadium.

President Mobutu thought that the contest would raise the profile of his country internationally, creating a more positive attitude towards the state, thereby attracting inward investment.

Mobutu knew that the eyes of the world would be on Kinshasa for the fight. If he was to achieve a good return on his investment of $10m, the world must see a happy, safe and sophisticated image of the city. As Mailer describes it, in the week before the fight Mobutu ordered the arrest of 1,000 known criminals and the execution of some of them. The street would be free of violence and crime throughout the period that the foreign press would be in town. This is a good example of the film using voice-over as well as images to create montage and juxtaposition within a sequence.

Are there any other examples of allusion to the history that backgrounds the film? ‘When we were Kings’ presents an ambivalent portrayal of Zaire. On the one hand, it hints at the turbulent history of the country, but on the other, suggests that staging the fight in Africa was significant and positive for the continent as a whole.

Archive film and photography

The filmmakers employ the technique of montage a number of times during the film. Again, these frequently use contrasting images and soundtrack. Near the start of the film there is a montage featuring Ali, archive footage of violence in Zaire, President Mobutu and the Klu Klux Klan in the US. The soundtrack is a jazz band with the voice-over of Ali – ‘I’m young, I’m handsome…’

Does this montage seek to persuade the audience that there are parallels to be drawn between events in the recent past of Zaire and the US in terms of racial intolerance? Does the dominance of Ali’s voice over and the jazz signify that the staging of the fight in Zaire will contribute towards the resolution of these problems?

PERSONALITIES

'When We Were Kings’ presents the audience with a rich cast of extraordinary personalities. As with the historical background to the film, the filmmakers use a similar technique to approach their subjects.

Read the brief biographies in this resource and research for further information on the internet using the suggested links. What different opinions do there seem to be on each person or movement described? On what grounds do these opinions differ? What differing opinions come across from watching ‘When we were Kings’?

An example might be to look at Don King’s website and then contrast this with the statements made by Norman Mailer and Thomas Hauser, who describes King as being intelligent and hardworking, but seriously amoral.

click here to go to the Biographies page.

How Personalities are Portrayed in the Film

In defiance of the convention of explication that we have come to expect, the people in the filmcharacters have few of their overt biographical details presented to us. The filmmakers achieve the impact that they want by letting their participants either speak for themselves or comment upon each other – thus giving us a very personal and subjective view.

But we are led to believe that documentarians are being objective and are just seeking to present the facts. Does this subjective approach therefore weaken the impact of the film? In many ways, ‘When we were Kings’ acts as a resource for the audience, giving them the raw material with which to go away and form an opinion of the people and the events.

As well as those directly participating in the film, other personalities are present in more subtle forms. We see photographs of Ali with both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., both of whom clearly influenced Ali’s views. By using these photographs in montages in the film, what portrait do you think the filmmakers are trying to paint of Muhammad Ali?

Ali converted to the Muslim faith in 1964 and refused the draft for Vietnam on the grounds of his religion. Do we get a sense from the film that Ali only chose to take certain elements from the different programmes advocated by Malcolm X and Martin Luther King?

To be associated with the causes advocated by Malcolm X and Martin Luther King in the mid-‘60’s and also to oppose the war in Vietnam was to place oneself outside the Establishment in America. As Ali’s biographer, Thomas Hauser says in the film, 'Ali was extremely unpopular in the States at that time.'

What can the impact of a world-famous boxer expressing political views have had on the psyche of America?

This view that the US had of Ali contrasts sharply with the opinion that the people of Zaire had of him. It also contrasts with how both the film and we the audience view Ali today. How do you think such a dramatic change of heart occurred?

‘We knew Muhammad Ali as a boxer; but more importantly, for his political stance’. Malik Bowens, Zaireian musician

IDENTITY

‘There was a time when if you called a black person an African, they’d be ready to fight’. Spike Lee, Film Director

By the time of the fight in 1974, Zaire was no longer part of the Belgian Empire and the Civil Rights Movement in the US had claimed many advances against segregation and discrimination.

When Muhammad Ali is on the aeroplane going to Kinshasa, he compares the poor self-image that black Americans have with how black Africans view themselves, owing to the influence of films and television. Throughout the film, Ali feels the need to discuss these issues and his feelings about how a greater sense of pride can be engendered in Black Americans.

Meanwhile, George Foreman is learning French phrases as he flies towards Kinshasa. Despite his attempts to identify with the people of Zaire, Foreman faces the challenge of being perceived by them as the representative of America – he even owns a German Shepherd dog – a symbol of the oppressive Belgian regime. Foreman just doesn’t have the same forthright delivery as Ali – when he says that ‘Africa is the home of civilisation’, it in no way receives the same reaction as if it had been said by Ali.

Norman Mailer thought however that it was Foreman rather than Ali who ‘embodied Negritude’ with a stillness and strength absent in the motor-mouthed Ali. Mailer puts much of this contrast down to the fact that Ali was scared about the impending fight and the weight of expectation laid upon him as the challenges for the title. Does the editing of this section of the film cause the audience to understand the two men better, or does it manipulate how we understand their views and personalities?

Don King also promoted a showcase of black American talent to precede the fight. As we see from the scenes at the Music Festival office in New York, the performers themselves in the most part are unaware of the history or characteristics of the country in which they are going to perform.

However, there is an interesting interchange between Ali, King and James Brown, as King says, ‘We left Africa in feather and chains; we’re coming back in splendour and glory’ The next day, Ali went and talked to local groups: ‘(We) Afro-Americans in America – we are not as good as you (Black Africans). You have a dignity in your poverty that we don’t have’.

RHYTHM

‘When we were Kings’ has a strong sense of rhythm in its construction, achieved through the counterpoint of images and soundtrack, creating a dynamism for the film.

Waiting for the fight, the James Brown soundtrack contrasts with the poverty, the military presence in Zaire and Ali fooling around as he restlessly waits for the contest.

There is again a contrast of rhythm as we see Ali at sunset by the roadside shot with a hand-held camera, as he imagines stamping on Foreman’s head. Edited against this, Foreman lies still at the training camp, saying that he wants people to think that he likes being there rather than that he had killed Ali.

Suggest other areas of the film that create their own sense of rhythm.

One of the cameramen credited on ‘When we were Kings’ is Albert Maysels, a renowned documentary maker who usually works with his brother, David. When we consider the style in which ‘When we were Kings’ is made, with its juxtaposition of archive and contemporary material, it perhaps illustrates Maysel’s view that there are two sorts of documentary truth – the raw footage and the more meaningful and coherent story that comes from extracting and juxtaposing that raw material.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘The Black Handbook' by E. LBute & H. J. P Harmer 'Martin and Malcolm and America' by J. H. Cone 'Sources Of the African–American Past' by R Finkenbine 'The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing' T. Hauser 'Muhammad Ali' by T. Hauser ‘Muhammad Ali in Perspective’ by T. Hauser ‘The Hutchison Dictionary of World History’ 2nd Edition 'The Fight' by Norman Mailer 'Malcolm – The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America' by B. Perry 'In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz' by Wrong, M.