Directed by Bill Siegel (The Weather Underground), The Trials of Muhammad Ali is a brief film that plays more like a precis of Ali’s life than a profound look at the transformative people’s champion. This is not to say that the film isn’t worthy of a watch. But, it is to suggest that the film does more to inspire further research into Ali’s life than it does to inform the audience.
Jumping from one moment to another, Trials doesn’t spend enough time on the chaotic era through which Ali struggled. Instead, we hear that he wins gold as Clay, denounce his slave name, Clay, and joins up with Malcolm X and Elija Muhammad. Within a frame, X parts ways with Muhammad – X’s brief explanation that Muhammad’s senility becomes a summary of his rationale – and Ali parts ways with X. Shortly thereafter, we learn that Malcolm X was assassinated.
While the film is not about the political strife and chaos in the Black Muslim organization, this tumult plays a large part in the development of Ali; however, this development is little seen as the film speeds to Ali’s refusal to fight in the Vietnam War and ultimately his literal trial in the Supreme Court.
Amidst the speed-of-light retelling of Ali’s life, there are moments that deserve to be highlighted much more than they are. In particular, his reason for refusing to fight in Vietnam: “I can’t go over there and shoot them people and come back home and be a nigger.” It is in this line that the true power of Ali rests. As the champion of the world, he was a target because of his race and stature, but he was also privileged to be in close proximity to a microphone, a freedom of speech unfelt by many African Americans. In other words, he was a voice, and he was – at various times – detested because he had a voice.
He was at once a symbol of peace – proclaiming that no true Muslim would carry a weapon – in a decade of war, but also a symbol of power, both in his physical stature and his ability to reach the minority masses.
Something else that’s missing from this film is the connection between the United States’ draft (a nice euphemism for conscription) and indentured servitude (a nice euphemism for slavery). While the two are not identical, they are similar when looking at the processes and procedures in the 1960’s. A few hundred years removed from the first glimpses of slavery, Ali provides the power and the means to fight back. In truth, his struggle contemporizes the racial discourse.
While the documentary ends with poignancy, asserting that Ali was / is an ever-evolving man, it moves so rapidly through the phases of Ali’s life that it’s often difficult to digest his importance. His shaking hands that held the 1996 Olympic torch in Atlanta was not just a symbol of strength and dedication because of his affliction with Parkinson’s. It was a symbol of the struggles that he went through as a young fighter. His silence on that stage was an ironic testament to the man that still exists behind the mostly muted tongue.
Ali deserves far more than 90 minutes of film. With any luck, the many silenced reels that are dispersed on a cutting room floor will one day be unleashed.
