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AMAZON JOURNAL
[1997. Directed by Geoffrey O'Connor. Cast: Sting, Chief Raoni, Paulinho Payaka. Realis Pictures. 60 mins.]
Journalist Geoffrey O'Connor's latest report on the Brazilian Amazon rain forest is as sobering as it is bewildering. Not only has he put together a superior documentary outlining the ecological devastation occurring in Western Brazil, but he's also traced a disheartening investigation into the decline of the indigenous peoples who have lived in that region for a millennium.
Paraphrasing British rock musician, Sting, at the film's conclusion, the complexity of the situation currently taking place in Brazil is truly mind-boggling. And after an hour's study, the ecological, social, political, and cultural wrongs taking place in the Amazon rain forest seem almost intractable.
O'Connor's film starts in 1989 when he spirited himself into Northwestern Brazil as one of 45,000 miners rushing into the Amazon basin when it was first reported gold was to be found. This onslaught not only devastated the land; it also disrupted the indigenous Yanomami peoples who inhabit this remote Brazilian territory.
These people — who only recently encountered modern civilization — are shown suffering the ills of modernity ranging from rapine economic exploitation to catastrophic medical illness. And like all the indigenous peoples who have come into contact with foreigners in these last 500 years, they have few natural defenses against diseases introduced into their environment.
O'Connor also shows us that this mingling of civilizations has more than economic and medical consequences. Among the tales told in his film is the assassination of environmentalist Chico Mendez; the political consequences of the 1992 United Nations environmental summit held in Brazil; and the framing of indigenous leader, Paulinho Payaka, on a bogus rape charge.
The rapidity of these events — coupled with their contradictory political and social ramifications — makes Amazon Journal an extraordinarily complex film. Fortunately, O'Connor's eye for off-beat details creates an all-too-human irony to complement these tragic events.
Sting is shown live on "The Phil Donahue Show" seated next to his unlikely cohort, lip-plated Chief Raoni of the Txucaramāe people, animatedly lecturing about the plight of the "noble savage." Just as the 1992 Karioca Conference on these peoples' political rights turns into a surreal carnival of hangers-on cashing in on the event's publicity. And, on a more somber note, renegade Portuguese Catholic Priest Father Guillermo and Dominican Sister Florence explain why they've given up trying to convert the Yanomami and have instead opted to go native.
Through these many twists and turns, O'Connor fulfills the first responsibility of any journalist: to get his story straight. He keeps up a dogged objectivity that laments these indigenous peoples' plight even as he evenhandedly records all the players' shortcomings. His Amazon Journal is quite some joumey indeed.
MICROCOSMOS
[1996. Directed by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou. Cast: Enough critters to fill an entomology textbook. Miramax Films/Miramax Home Video. 77 mins.]
Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou aren't kidding around when they show us what kind of jungle it is out there in nature. Their spectacular single day in the life of an ordinary French meadow is as riveting as it is commonplace.
Because, of course, the countryside isn't quite so common when you get down to the view of a bug. As Nuridsany and Perennou's camera shows us, this minature world is fraught with dangers that make our own living space seem downright serene.
Essentially voiceless — with the exception of a few lines of unnecessary commentary at the beginning and end of the film — Microcosmos relies on a masterful soundtrack that runs from opera to ambient sound. And even these sounds aren't really necessary because the documentan has a rich visual imagery that makes everything else superfluous.
The show's stars, so to speak, are the whole world of tiny creatures. For example, two snails caress one another in one of the most amazing erotic mating dances surely ever captured on film. Just as a beetle lives out his own personal myth of Sisyphus pushing a ball of dung repeatedly up (and down) a slight mound of dirt.
Nuridsany and Perennou's patience in pukling their film together has resulted in some extraordinarily beautiful cinematography. And their obsessively keen attention to detail has resulted in a worldview whose off-handed familiarity is offset by its minuscule scale. Microcosmos may be micro in size, but it's much larger in spirit.
WHEN WE WERE KINGS
1996. Directed by Leon Gast. Cast: Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Norman Mailer. Gramercy Pictures/Polygram Home Video. 92 mins.]
Muhammad Ali has always maintained he's the greatest. And he's surely correct based on this extraordinary true story of one the "greatest" fights of this century.
The Ali who dances and prances through Leon Gast's When We Were Kings is an extraordinary man by any Standard. Ostensibly a report of 1974's famed "Rumble in the Jungle," Ali dominates the center stage solely by the force of his personality.
It's easy for us to forget that when Ali and Heavyweight Champion George Foreman finally hooked it up for ten million dollars in Kinshasa, Zaire, on October 30, 1 974, Ali was the extremely heavy underdog. Indeed, as Norman Mailer vividly recounts in his eyewitness report leading up to the bout, even his cornermen were convinced he was headed toward disaster.
The only edge Ali could count upon was the exuberant shouts of "Ali, bomaye!" yelled from every corner by the Zairian people who had adopted him as one of their own. This gleeful "Ali, kill him!" visibly buoyed the challenger as he marshaled his powers to confront his seemingly indestructible opponent.
Gast's camera crew captures the festivities that took place in the city on the eve of the fight. He taped a fabulous side-show music festival held in conjunction with the event featuring James Brown, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba, the Spinners, and the Pointer Sisters. He even captured the gash above Foreman's right eye during a pre-fight tune-up that forced a week's delay in the match.
As with the best of documentary footage, When We Were Kings so vividly seizes on the drama of its famous conclusion, it builds a disproportionate anticipation out of its already known outcome.
And full credit must go to one of the best masters of manipulation in boxing. For the conclusion is seemingly foregone if only from Ali's incurably voluble doggerel: "l've been wrestling with an alligator, l've done tussled with a whale. l'm so mean, I make medicine sick. I'm bad ..."
By contrast, Foreman was so anxious — like Sonny Liston before him — to cure himself of Ali's taunts, he fell prey to one of the most ingenious tactical defenses in sports history. Ali's famous "rope-a-dope" so completely played with Foreman's head, the champ was thoroughly spent after six rounds of flaying at his challenger's apparently iron-plated rib cage. After that, he was easy pickings in the eighth round.
Ali believed fate and history were in his corner. And as such, this extraordinarily shrewd psychologist as pugilist illustrates why he deserves his self-proclaimed nickname.
For Joe Louis may have been a better boxer. And Foreman, himself, is perhaps the most devastating physical specimen of the modem era. But Ali was nothing if not always honest. He knew he was the greatest and When We Were Kings unequivocally backs up his word.