#BLOOD BROTHERS MOVIE TV#

His boxing was an extension of his defiance. Given that art and popular culture have spent decades whitewashing Muhammad Ali’s legacy, this is a brave and pragmatic stance to take for a film. Selective memory is a coping mechanism for not just humans but time itself.

#BLOOD BROTHERS MOVIE TV#

While watching Ali make the most brainwashed statements in his TV interviews, I could not help but wonder how we choose to remember heroes the way we want to – edited, immortal, and pure. (Liberal Twitter would have cancelled them today). Though they both started out as a necessary voice against racial oppression, the documentary takes a closer look at the problematic people they morphed into – and the price they paid for their leaps of faith.

The documentary paints the boxer’s three-year bond with Malcolm X as a doomed relationship – and the two as unhinged victims, rather than powerful narrators, of the black rage lining the periphery of America’s White Supremacist movement. A mellow Obama towards the end of his presidency reflects Ali’s guilt after he himself severes ties with the Nation of Islam, long after the assassination of his ex-friend. This inner turmoil is never seen but hinted at by Ali’s brother and daughter in Blood Brothers. And Ali is then forced to choose “between individual and institution” only to realise his folly late in life – just like Obama does late into his second term, when he recognises that his identity and institution need not be at odds with each other. A hardlining X is ostracised from the Nation of Islam for defying his leader and making inflammatory comments on the Kennedy Assassination. Obama is forced to distance himself from the old pastor, who later expresses a sense of betrayal in his interview with the makers of the series.Ĭornel West, a political activist and philosopher who criticises Obama’s mild stance, also appears in Blood Brothers to explain a similar conflict between Ali and Malcom X. In the thick of the US Presidential race, however, a few of Wright’s radical white-bashing sermons from the past are leaked to trigger an untimely controversy for the African-American candidate. In the docu-series Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union, we see a young Barack Obama finding meaning and mentorship in Reverend Jeremiah Wright, an influential pastor of the Trinity United Christ Church in Chicago. The second title is not directly connected to Blood Brothers, and yet it is. Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire : Netflix unveils trailer of Zack Snyder's two-part cinematic marvel Former child actor Evan Ellingson passes away at 35, no cause of death reported yet

The chatty night serves as a microcosm of the feelings of betrayal beginning to brew between the two 'blood brothers.' Those who have seen this film will immediately get the context when, in Blood Brothers, a talking head mentions the mysterious meeting at Miami’s Hampton Hotel: 'Nobody knows what was said in there.' Scenes from King’s film – especially Malcolm X’s tense exchanges with Sam Cooke – fill in the ideological blanks, fleshing out the eloquent narrative skeleton traced by this documentary. The meeting happens at a crucial juncture in both Clay and X’s journey together: Clay is on the brink of joining the Nation of Islam and declaring his new Muslim faith to the world, while his mentor X is on the verge of leaving the organisation after his rift with leader Elijah Muhammad. Regina King’s terrific directorial debut, One Night in Miami, is a fictionalised account of a meeting between Ali, X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke on the night the young boxer – then known as Cassius Clay – becomes the Heavyweight Champion in 1964. Two recent films came to mind while I watched Marcus A Clarke’s Blood Brothers, a clear-minded documentary charting the friendship between civil rights comrades Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.

Blood brothers movie