When We Were Kings (1996)

“I'm young, I'm handsome, I'm fast, I'm pretty and can't possibly be beat.” Muhammad Ali

Good documentaries capture a special, specific moment in time and illuminate it like lightning in a bottle.

Great documentaries take that light and shine it on the audience to help them see what they didn’t really understand about the past so they can better understand their present and their future.

When We Were Kings is a great documentary.

The film, directed by Leon Gast, covers the classic 1976 boxing match – The Rumble in the Jungle -- between George Foreman, the heavy champion of the world at the time, and Muhammad Ali who was, believe it or not, the underdog challenger of the fight.

If all it did was show audiences highlights from the fight while they listened to the pundits of pugilism (Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Howard Cosell among them), When We Were Kings would be worth watching.

Gast had the vision to look beyond the ring and to see the much bigger picture of two very different Black Americans going back to the land of their forefathers – land those same forefathers were taken from to be slaves in the ‘new world.’ The diversities between the two champions as they relate to their African homeland, which in Gast’s film is a mirror reflection of the problems between the races in America at the time, makes for compelling viewing.

Starring Muhammad Ali, George Foreman.

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Koyaanisqatsi is the Hopi Indian term for "life out of balance,” and while there is a lot to be said about the film, I think director Godfrey Reggio sums it up best in the interview that’s part of the DVD’s bonus features.

The film, he admits, means different things to different people. To one person it is a film about saving the planet, and to another it is an homage to industrial progress. Some are deeply moved by seeing Koyaanisqatsi, he says, and some think it’s “a piece of (crap).”

While you reaction may fall into any of the above categories – and probably into a few Reggio didn’t mention – one thing is guaranteed, you won’t forget the experience of watching Koyaanisqatsi. And trust me; Koyaanisqatsi is a film you experience, not just watch.

Koyaanisqatsi doesn’t have any sort of narrative, at least in any traditional sense of the word. It’s actually made up of a series of images – from clouds moving across the desert sky to people rushing through their daily commute – all played using a wide range of photographic techniques to highlight the poetry of the motion that many of us either miss because we’re too literal about what we see or that we ignore because we’ve become just so inured to the world we live in.

It’s fascinating to watch, and when you crank up the Philip Glass score to 11 it becomes downright hypnotic.

Directed by Godfrey Reggio. Music by Philip Glass.
IMDB Site.