Ali (Opening Credits Sequence)

365 Films

Entry #158

Ali (2001)

Directed by Michael Mann

I suppose I should begin this entry by explaining the school year length absence of posts.  All I can offer is that they're very good customers, and I'm not answering any more questions.  One of the initial problems I ran into with this blog is that, since I started it right before turning 29, I realized quickly that it would be a rather herculean effort to keep it updated on a day by day basis before turning 30.  Apparently, what you're supposed to do is write all the entries well before the actual year, that way you can just automatically post them as each day comes.  The idea of harnessing preparation before embarking on a task is an entirely foreign one to me, though I hope to become hip to its appeal over time.  In any event, re-watching, writing about and subsequently posting about one film a day proved to be too much for me and my incredibly dedicated team of whatever they're called.  Subsequently, I have decided to take a new approach.  This may not appeal to some of the 365 purists out there, but it works for me and since the only eyes that will ever read this site will be mine as I'm writing it, I have my full support. 

Instead of an entire film, I will write about a sequence, a moment, a look, a music cue, any smallish bite size portion of a larger whole.  I will try to personalize each entry and talk a little about my feelings regarding the overall trajectory of the film itself, but honestly, the more contained I can keep these posts, the more likely I'll be to finish them.  There you go folks, that's how the sausage is made, laid out on right on display for you.  That's how we do it here at Anti-Fanboy industries, we keep things real.  So to begin the re-boot of 365 Films in 365 days, I will take a look at the first 10 minutes (approx.) of Michael Mann's ambitious and undervalued 2001 biography film, Ali.  Bon appetit.

One of the things I find so remarkable about this opening sequence to Ali is the fact that the title character says merely two rather innocuous words for its duration.  He remains silent, dormant, and constantly in motion like a spinning top.  The rest of the film opens up Ali (and one can see it a bit at the very end of this clip), to examine his stage persona vs. his real life personality.  One thing becomes remarkably clear about both variations, he never shuts up.  To begin the film with him in a monk-like near vow of silence is to suggest a kind of passivity, but I feel that the images construe an entirely opposite scenario, this is a mind that can not stop thinking and a result, can not stop reinventing itself.  The opening title card displaying the date to be February 24, 1964 reminds us that he is still Cassius Clay and more to the point, NOT yet the world champion.  This sequence is about how he becomes not just a man but that man.  

Director Michael Mann, working with the mind-boggingly talented cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki achieve a special kind of documentary lyricism with the images in this sequence.  From the impenetrable wall of blinding white light held fast by the spot on Sam Cooke, to the flickering blur of the boxing bag that Ali works with a speed that appears to be beyond the human brain.  In the wrong hands, these images could appear rather commonplace and occurring in somewhat banal settings. They are certainly filled with the kind of laser focused attention to period detail for which Mann is known, and in his and Lubezki's skilled hands, they mange to flow evocatively from one gorgeous, impressionistic moment to the next.  The idea here is a mind, body, and soul in flux, constantly in motion, refusing to stand still.  A distinction one of Ali's trainers makes as he's jumping rope, "Never jump in one place, bad for the heart.  Forward, backwards, sideways, that's the most important thing."  In addition to defining Ali's fighting style in future bouts, we watch him take these words to heart while also making cognitive associations with his brain.  When then world champ Sonny Liston taunts him with "beat ya ass like I's ya daddy", the film cuts back to young Cassius watching his father paint a white Jesus and then taking a trip on a segregated bus as the newspaper images of a brutally murdered Emmet Till are literally shoved into his face.  This is followed by an adult Clay watching a speech given by Malcolm X wherein it is explicitly stated what Black men and women should do when somebody lays a hand on them.  Ali's father may not have beat him physically but he brought him into a world, a society, and a culture that seemed determined to beat him into absolute submission.  Again, we see Mann layering and constructing his images in a way that suggest a human being in evolution and he does it while never having to resort to distracting and unconvincing scenes of exposition like so many other biopics must do.  

Even the live performance medley of Sam Cooke serves as a harbinger of reinvention.  Up until the Harlem Square Club performance, Cooke was a cross-over gospel pop star with mainstream appeal.  This particular tour in 1963, however, saw him performing to predominately black audiences and giving a much more visceral, loud, and raw type of show that would have most likely scared the living shit out of his mainstream pop fans.  As a result, the record was shelved for fear of the damage it would do to his relatively clean cut reputation.  Watching Cooke in the film (at least the actor playing him) we see an artist truly engaged with his devoted audience.  Physically reaching out to touch them, and recreating a gospel style call and response with the jubilant Bring It On Home To Me chorus finale.  A style of recitation that Ali, himself would come to adopt in the film and his boxing career.  Particularly with his weigh-in orations and declarations of physical and mental superiority over all of his opponents.  Not to mention Ali's obvious contempt for mainstream acceptance of black  culture.  Again, the way Mann selects and cuts these images, it's almost as if we're watching Ali absorb the culture and radically alter it to his will through his work and through his mind.  

This is an electrifying ten minutes of essentially pure filmmaking.  It does come as somewhat of a let down when the rest of the run-time maintains a more conventional narrative while hopping and skipping around the best of Ali compilation disc.  That's not meant to write the film off completely, it certainly has its moments of pure transcendence, but on the whole it is perhaps Mann's most uneven work.  It is in these opening ten moments that we see what Mann utilizing the the skills of what Manhola Dargis refers to as those of a "thinking filmmaker."  The exactness of the ideas being conveyed by Mann and his images impart upon us a dedication by the filmmaker to fill every frame with as much thought and execution as he possibly can.  In a way, he's explicitly trying to keep up with Ali himself, who didn't merely throw punches so much as he expertly manipulated pieces on a chess board.  That's not to say those punches didn't have a super-human level of severity and accuracy, it's just that each one meant something.  If that is how I wrap this up (if there's been any trajectory to this post at all), it's to leave you with the idea that when you're watching a Michael Mann film, it is imperative that you pay very close attention.  Every image counts.