View Perspective | This is the boxing champion Ali and his friends you don't know

Lennie 2022-02-17 08:02:24


February 25, 1964 was a day in obscurity for more people. However, for some boxing fans, they may know that this is the day when the world-renowned boxing champion Muhammad Ali defeated Sony Liston and won the heavyweight title for the first time. From then on, professional boxing Entered the era of Ali.

For many black people, February 25, 1964 was destined to be an extraordinary night. This night was the last night of Muhammad Ali, known as Cathers Marcellus Clay Jr. . The day after winning the title of boxing champion, Ali announced to the world that he had converted to Islam, and officially announced that he was about to join the Islamic State of Islam, an Islamic organization of the black civil rights movement, and later abandoned his "slaves". name", and acquired the name Muhammad Ali that would accompany him throughout his life.

Figure | This night can indeed be called a "legendary night".

This ordinary but extraordinary night was adapted into a unique film by Kemp Powers , a well-known Hollywood screenwriter and one of the screenwriters of the annual hit Pixar animation "Spiritual Journey" in 2013. stage play. This is also the stage debut of Cap Powers. This play also won the Schmidt Award for Cap Powers. Now, Cap Powers has put this play on the big screen. This movie has also become a well-known actress Ray. Gina King's directorial debut.

Figure | In 2019, she won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 91st Academy Awards for "If Beale Street Could Talk". Now she is back in the Oscars as a director with "One Night in Miami".

The film has emerged in many film festivals. After the film was released, the freshness of Rotten Tomatoes was 98%. Regina King was also regarded as a strong contender for the best director of this year's Oscar. At the same time, she played four roles in this film. The four actors of famous historical figures are also very likely to compete with "The Trial of the Chicago Seven" for the best ensemble award at this year's Oscars.

So what happened this night in a black hotel in Miami?

Figure | Amazon also released the "Oscar War Circle" poster. At present, the film has declared all Oscar awards including Best Picture, Best Original Song, and Best Original Music.


historical facts

Unpredictable on the eve of change

The film tells the story of Kathys Clay, who won the first boxing title in his life, did not go to the original celebration party, but turned to three of his friends, a 28-year-old well-known American football player. Athlete Jim Brown, American famous black musician Sam Cook, and Martin Luther King Jr. Black sports leader Malcolm X came to the Hampton Inn in Miami to celebrate together s story.

Figure | Historical Sam Cook

Figure | Jim Brown in History

Figure | Malcolm X in History

Perhaps to many people, the fact that these four powerful figures in different fields in the United States are gathered in a small room in the Hampton Hotel is a bizarre thing. And according to Bowers' investigation, this did indeed happen.

On February 25, 1964, the trio came to Miami to cheer on their friend Keith Clay. As shown in the film, Sam Cook and Malcolm X cheered for Clay from the audience, while Brown participated in the commentary of the game as a commentator. The match went to the seventh round. With Sony Liston's abandonment, he also gave up the title of world heavyweight champion. The 22-year-old Klay hugged his team excitedly and left this place behind. famous photo.

Figure | The 22-year-old young boxing champion hugs his team excitedly after winning.

Later, Jim Brown, who had planned to go to the celebrations in Fontainebleau, was pulled away by the young boxing champion and went to the Hampton Inn. The four ended up spending a long night in Malcolm X's room, but none of the four mentioned what happened behind the door to outsiders. Therefore, the only information people have about this night is that after the four returned to Malcolm's room, they ate all the ice cream in the room.

Figure | The film also developed a plot based on the historical fact of "ice cream", and this plot showed the four people's different reactions to this secret meeting.

Although this night can be said to be mysterious enough for history, the final different fates of the four are clearly recorded in the history books.

Jim Brown eventually quit the NFL ( National Football League ), turned to show business, and even had a "director's addiction", the 85-year-old former athlete is still alive today, the oldest of the four.

Boxing champion Ali won the title of heavyweight champion 22 times in the following 20 years, and even publicly released his anti-war statement during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and refused to serve in the military. He was eventually revoked by a U.S. District Court for refusing military service, his boxing license was confiscated, his passport was confiscated, and he was even sentenced to five years in prison. But he still attended various rallies and TV shows to promote anti-war propaganda. In 1981, Ali withdrew from boxing and began to focus on religion, charity and the maintenance of world peace. However, Parkinson's disease became the biggest disease that plagued him, and in 2016, Ali, 74, bid farewell to the world forever.

Figure | Boxing champion Ali and Jim Brown in his later years. The two had previously held different views on Trump's rise to power.

The two former athletes at least survived those turbulent years, and the ending of the other two legends is even more sad. Less than 10 months after the four spent a night in Miami, Sam Cook was shot and killed by the female manager of a motel. The female manager claimed she was attacked by Sam Cook and eventually had to shoot herself in defence and beat him in the head with a wooden stick. However, the case is still a mystery to many people, and the account of the female manager and another female victim is regarded by many as not credible. But in any case, the untimely death of this musical genius still left everyone with a lot of emotion.

Figure | The last song Sam Cook sang on a TV show in the film was called "A Change Is Gonna Come". Sadly, the album was released after Sam's death.

As for the black activist Malcolm X, just 11 days after Ali announced that he had converted to Islam and joined Malcolm's Nation of Islam, because he could not bear the actions of "Nation of Islam" leader Elijah Mohammed For this reason, he publicly announced that he had parted ways with his former mentor and benefactor, Elijah Mohammed, and officially quit the "Islamic State". After that, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca, visited Egypt, France, the United Kingdom and other places, and then returned to China.

After returning to China, Malcolm X continued to be monitored by organizations such as the FBI, and his family was constantly harassed by believers from the "Islamic State". The Islamic State even sued Malcolm for the repossession of Malcolm's New York property. However, on the eve of the court's intention to reject the request, the residence was thrown with Molotov cocktails and the house was destroyed. Fortunately, the Malcolm family woke up in time and escaped.

Figure | Historical photos of Malcolm defending his home with a gun.

Figure | In the film, when Malcolm's home was burned, he also held a similar type of gun to protect his family, a similar plot also appeared in Spike Lee's "Black Tide".

But luck did not continue to favor him. On February 19, 1965, almost a year after that night in Miami, Malcolm was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m. when he was shot by three gangsters at a Manhattan rally. All three gangsters were sentenced to life imprisonment after their arrest. All three are members of the "Islamic State". However, there are also conspiracy theories claiming that there may be other forces behind the case.

Looking back on the experiences of these four people, the night of February 25, 1964 was indeed quite meaningful. These four people stood at the crossroads of their own destiny and forced them to face the turning point of their lives. It's exactly the same question: what can they, as four people at the pinnacle of black American influence, do to improve the status of black people in society?

Figure | The gathering of the four in Miami, through the narrative of the film, makes this night extraordinarily historical.


story

Sonata of History and Imagination

Cap Powers, a former reporter, was intrigued when he first heard about the legendary gathering of the four in Miami, and tried to contact Ali and Jim Brown for further interviews, but Ultimately ended in failure. Later, Bowers, who switched careers to become a stage playwright, had the idea of ​​putting this night on the stage instead.

As a one-act play, "One Night in Miami", the four actors were able to complete their own review and outlook on their own lives in a single space, from tit-for-tat to reaching an agreement. New ideas burst forth, they were able to speak freely, and finally they gained the courage and determination to stick to their own path.

Figure | The stage version of One Night in Miami.

The climax of the play, arguably Sam Cook's singing of " A Change Is Gonna to Come " in a hotel room, is a song in which the four men's thoughts mingle. However, as a stage play, "One Night in Miami" has its own limitations after all. Due to the existence of the "fourth wall", the audience can only view all this from a certain distance and from an objective point of view.

Figure | The film breaks the limitations of the stage play space, and is sung by Leslie Odom Jr., who has an excellent performance in "Hamilton", which can be described as a surprise.

Now, "One Night in Miami" has been put on the big screen, and Cap Powers has also made drastic changes to the original script. Relative to the constraints of the stage, the movie version of "One Night in Miami" provides Bowers with more space. The most intuitive is the first half of the film.

The first 40 minutes of the film show the lives of the four legends and the predicaments they face. Malcolm is constantly under surveillance and hesitating about whether to draw a line from the "state of Islam". Clay lost a fight to the boos of countless white spectators, but at the same time he was about to challenge Sony Liston for the title. Jim Brown just returned home from an amazing NFL season and was greeted by white people with a "friendly" welcome, but never imagined that all this was just the hypocrisy of those white people who thought they were friendly. Sam Cook finally came to perform at his dream club in Copacabana, but was disturbed by the white accompaniment and the audience gradually left.

Figure | Jim Brown in the film came to a white house that seemed to be friendly to him, but finally found that he couldn't even step in the door of this white house. Here, the film uses a framed composition to restrict Jim Brown to the frame, and the door also symbolizes the insurmountable divide between the black and white races at the time.

With their own predicament and resentment, the four came to Miami to watch Klay's championship match. This kind of opening, to a certain extent, also provides a simple "review" for people who don't know much about that history from their respective perspectives, and also adds a "destiny-like ritual" to the whole film. feel". And that's exactly what Bowers hopes to achieve.

And when the four entered Malcolm's room, the story really kicked off. The four of them thought it was a small celebration; they gradually discovered that things were not so simple, and all of this was Malcolm's "scheme"; then the secrets of the four were exposed to the public; and finally, everyone left In the room, they embarked on the next stop of their respective lives and faced the turning point of their own lives. This movie can be said to use four men to hold up the "inheritance and transition" of the whole story. Behind the huge volume of lines, what is shown is the sincere feelings of the four friends and the emotional transformation in the face of fate.

Figure | The four went from being full of differences, arguing with each other, to finally getting to know each other further.

Although the meeting of the night was real, and the ice cream was real, were all the lines that filled this entire story made up by Powers himself? Not so.

The smart Bowers can be said to have compressed the complete life experiences of the four into one night. Especially when Malcolm played Bob Dylan's " Blowing in the Wind" ( one of the most important works in American folk history) to provoke Sam Cook, implying that he wanted to please the white American public. Sam Cook's response to giving up on speaking out for black people.

Historically, when Sam Cook composed the song "Change is Coming", he also expressed that he was full of guilt and anger when he heard Bob Dylan's song. In his opinion, this song Completely wrote the pain and despair that black people can't achieve equal status no matter how hard they try, and this song is precisely written by a white man.

Figure | The proud Sam Cook finally began to confide in his friends. It turns out that everyone is fighting for their own rights for the black community in their own way.

Through the combination of historical facts and his own imagination, Bowers successfully described the inner struggle, resentment and final epiphany of these four people in this short night. The viewers who accompanied the four of them on their overnight journey were filled with mixed emotions as they watched them gradually approach their own turning point and even the end of their lives at the end of the film.

From this point of view, it is also inseparable from the efforts of director Regina King.

Figure | Director Regina King and the crew work on set.


Film

Quietly flowing lens language

Although the acting career is still in full swing, Regina King's ambition to gradually transform into a director is also obvious to all. After directing many episodes of TV series, Regina King finally ushered in her own screen as a director First show. As a result, this highly completed, smooth and coherent work makes it impossible to see that Regina King is still a "rookie director".

Figure | Regina King communicates with the actors on the set.

The film contains a large number of dialogue scenes between four people and two people, which makes the language of the film's shots extremely important. If you don't pay attention, it will make the film look quite boring. The handling of these informative dialogue scenes in "One Night in Miami" can be said to have taught all new directors a "textbook" lesson. Through the constant changes of characters and the combination of multiple scenes during editing, the audience gradually has a deeper understanding of the different relationships between the four people as the story progresses.

Figure | Through the different positions of the four people, it shows the different political ideas of the four people. This 3-1 stance is also often seen in the film, showing that the four have distinctly different opinions on the black movement.

When some contradictions intensify, the camera will advance to a close-up or even close-up of a single person, and when the four people have different positions, the film will also show each other's "standing line" through different larger scenes. . Through the precise control of post-editing, this approach has also succeeded in further intensifying the contradiction, and has also successfully driven the rhythm of the film.

Figure | Through editing, the characters of different scenes are cut together, which successfully strengthens the contradictions with each other and achieves the effect of controlling the rhythm of the film.

At the same time, the combination of fixed camera and Steadicam also allows the audience to truly enter this space and have a "close contact" with the four people. This has also become a "watershed" in the true sense of film and stage.

In addition, Regina King also has unique requirements for the performance of the actors. For all of us, these four are legendary figures that are out of reach, which also makes the audience naturally take a sense of distance when looking at these four characters. Yet Regina King, when directing the actors, magnifies their human side all the time.

When Malcolm broke down and cried in front of Jim, we no longer saw the aggressive black activist leader in the historical data, we saw a real man who, in order to uphold his ideals and justice, Sacrificing all of himself, and because of this, he is full of guilt for his beloved family. When he briefly collapsed at a turning point in his life, we really discovered that this seemingly invincible activist leader was actually under suffocating pressure. At this moment, he has gradually realized that his time is short, but He couldn't leave his wife and daughter behind, and he couldn't give up his long-standing black movement. Such hesitation and pressure were enough to tear a man apart.

Figure | The film sets the moment of Malcolm X's brief breakdown.

This kind of "human" performance also enables people to have a better emotional connection with the four characters, understand their pain, and thus have to admire their courage and firm will.

In addition, it has to be said that there is also the "birth at the right time" of this movie. Now that the scars of "BLM" in 2020 have not faded away, "One Night in Miami" is also full of political significance.

The film not only unilaterally accuses whites of discrimination and oppression of blacks, but also reflects the speculations of blacks on different forms of "resistance" measures. Compared with Malcolm's radical style, he even called JFK's death "well deserved"; Sam Cook advocated making blacks economically independent in order to achieve the promotion of blacks' social status. This kind of radical and moderate two factions The mutual speculation between them also insinuates some aspects of the black movement in the United States from a certain angle. In the end, Regina Kim also showed her thoughts to people in the film. Only by completing internal self-examination and awareness and internal unity can there be real hope to unite and shout out.

Figure | The film also restores some scenes based on some historical photos.

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View more about One Night in Miami... reviews

Extended Reading
  • Russ 2022-02-17 08:02:24

    Too much preaching, still can't get in.

  • Madalyn 2022-03-26 09:01:11

    There are too many politically correct films at the Oscars this year

One Night in Miami... quotes

  • Jim Brown: I am Jim motherfucking Brown!

  • Sam Cooke: [On Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind"] I felt I should have written that song.