‘The greatest’
‘Muhammad Ali’ gets the Ken Burns treatment on PBS
It’s not a stretch to say that Muhammad Ali was one of the most consequential men of the 20th century — in and out of the boxing ring. Consequently, he’s getting the Ken Burns treatment in a multi-part documentary upcoming on PBS.
“Muhammad Ali,” a four-part, eight-hour documentary produced by Burns (“Baseball,” “The Civil War”) and airing tonight through Wednesday (8 p.m. on WGBH), looks at the life of the three-time heavyweight champion, whose lightning speed, agility and smarts thrilled the sport’s fans and whose outspokenness and principled stands on human rights, racial and religious biases and the war in Vietnam inspired people around the world and challenged notions of the roles athletes and celebrities play in society.
The film covers all the bases in the life of the man born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., from his childhood in Louisville, Ky., and personal life that included four marriages to his conversion to Islam, his complex relationships with Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, his refusal to enter the military during the war, the consequent prison sentence and loss of his first heavyweight title.
And then, of course, there were the rivalries (Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, George Foreman) and the fights (Rumble in the Jungle, Thrilla in Manila) before his retirement, post-boxing life and death from Parkinson’s in 2016.
Along the way, we learn that Ali was a man of many contradictions, one of incredible wit, kindness and generosity who could be exceedingly cruel to opponents he didn’t like. And his famous boasts of “I am the greatest” were at times counterbalanced by humility, which he notably exhibited after losing to Frazier in 1971.
“He basically has been bragging about it,” Burns explains. “He’s been ragging, I think, irresponsibly and inexcusably about Joe Frazier and using the terms that white racists use to describe Black men. And he loses. … And the next morning, he is completely quiet and silent and self-contained and talking about how everyone has losses. ‘I’m here as an example to remind people that the death of a loved one or the loss of a job or a loss of a title is just what life does.’
“And it might appear to be an opposite of all the braggadocio but the braggadocio … plus that humility is exactly the same thing. It is communicating to all of the people of the world who feel like everything is stacked against them, particularly people of color.”
Burns, who produced the documentary with Stephanie Jenkins and writers/directors Sarah Burns and David McMahon, often talks about his documentary subjects being examples of “history firing on all cylinders.” In the case of Ali, he says, this one was “a souped-up engine.”
“He’s one of the few people from the past that I’d want to hang out with,” Burns said. “I think certainly Lincoln, Louis Armstrong and Muhammad Ali. … He is a kind of uber-American in every sense of the word.”