Tyson

Given that the last movie I saw before I left the States was a movie about European degradation, it seemed fitting that the first movie I saw over here was one about the seemier side of the American character.

For the first three days in Lisbon my task was mainly to recover from jet-lag. This was made extremely difficult by the fact that getting any sort of sleep at all in the Lisbon Lounge Hostel was a challenge. Don´t get me wrong, it was a great place to hang out and meet other travelers, many of them two decades younger than I was. My favorite thing about the stay was the in-house meals, prepared by one of the staff membes, which were darn cheap and absolutely delicious. Every night it was different group of people of different nationalities, talking over various and diverse subjects, and sharing stories.

The Australians were there in full force, as they were in Europe 25 years ago, and to my suprise I let myself be dragged out for a night of drinking and clubbing. In between all this madness and lack of sleep, I managed to do a fair bit of sightseeing and walking around the old quarter of the city. At every turn I kept having to fight the feeling that I was too old to be doing this.

After three days, I´d seen most of the tourist attractions on my list, and it suddenly occurred to me that for my last afternoon in the city, it might be nice to see a movie. I fired up the Google movie listings tool in the hostel and found that the pickings were slim.

My Portuguese isn´t good enough to allow me to see a local movie. Yes I could be brave, but I wanted a gentler start to my European movie-going experiences. In Portugal, the Hollywood movies are subtitled, so if I could find one I wanted, it would be just like a regular movie, if I could find one. But I´d seen everything that was out (because of the aforementioned release date lag), and I wasn´t in the mood to see Anjos e Demonicos again. Why the hell did it have to be that movie that movie was released in synch with the United States?

But fortunately there it was, an American movie I hadn´t seen. It was Tyson, the acclaimed documentary about the boxer. I disappointed at having missed it in Boston, but now I was glad I´d let it slip past.

It was showing at the Cinema City in the Alvalade district. My hostel was in the old Baixo district, so I walked up a few blocks to Rossio Square, dodged the cocaine dealers who approach you constantly there, and descended into the metro, where I caught the line northward. After a couple stops, I got off at Alvalade, which unlike the city center, is a modern district.

I´d given myself a couple hours headstart, and after checking the time to make sure it was correct, I killed some time walking around the nearby neighborhoods. Walking through European cities is something I´ve long enjoyed, and I consider it incumbent, if you´re going to get to know a place, to see both it´s old and new districts.

Unfortunately it was brutally sunny and hot, so mostly what I did was hide in the shade under the trees in the nearby Campo Grande until right below show time. On my way back to the theater, I managed to get caught in a wedding party on the sidewalk.

The Cinema City (I took some pictures, but they will have to wait until I can upload them) had a full-fledged cafe in the lobby. I bought a ticket for five euros seventy (a little over eight bucks), then bought a Pepsi, which I drank entirely before the show, since I was so thirsty. Just like in America, you pay a premium for soft drinks at the theater. In this case, it cost me almost three euros for a medium drink, which is normally absurdly expensive for Portugal.

I was definitely curious to experience the auditorium. It had about a hundred seats, on a stadium incline, with high backs that did not recline. I noticed there was a place number on my seat, but I ignored it in the sparse crowd and sat down in front. The one thing that leapt out a me as being not-American was that the screen itself had slightly rounded edges, something I´ve never seen in the United States.

There were ads and a few trailers before the movie---more ads but fewer trailers that I was used to.

When the movie started, I found it hard not to read the subtitles, even though the movie was in English and the words were in Portuguese. I suppose this is a common phenomenon. Among other things, it let me learn a few new Portuguese words and phrases.

As for the movie, I would not have expected to enjoy it, but for that fact that it got tremendous reviews. Almost immediately I could see why. It was shot in a way that made it very easy to follow the story of Tyson´s life as he narrated it.

There´s that magic word again---story. Does life really make a narrative? It seems that way if you let it. I think this is what I was trying to get at in my previous post about Casablanca. It´s why I write this blog, to attempt to understand life as a story, and to see story is manifest in the art of motion pictures. Those two things seem to go together with me, which is why I write this blog the way I do. I cannot separate out the experience of watching a movie from the experience of everything else in my life. In that respect, it makes perfect sense that the movie that prompted me to start writing this was Synecdoche, New York.

Hollywood motion pictures tell stories. Life makes a story. History, and in particular the history of America, makes a story. These are all woven together for me. I start out talking about one, and I slip into talking about another facet.

Sure I followed the story of Tyson´s career, out of the corner of my consciousness, while it was going on. I detested the guy. He was pure thug to me. I rejoiced at everything bad that happened to him, and especially when he was defeated in the ring.

What this movie did was make me ashamed of those feelings. It turns out I had simply fallen for the image of Mike Tyson as his promoters, and the media (and he himself) wanted to put forth. Watching this documentary I had a complete turnaround. I was rooting for the guy the entire way.

For one thing, you learn what was really driving Tyson the whole time: fear. The guy was simply afraid. As a kid he was beaten up, and he was terrified of anyone getting the best of him in that way, because it meant life or death on the streets. In this respect, Tyson is the perfect manifestation of the street gang culture that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.

But it a broader sense, I found myself rooting for Tyson because of personal reasons. The guy was born in 1966, and it when I heard that in the movie, I realized that in the history of boxing, this is the guy from my cohort. All at once, I saw my entire life in his story, even as divergent as we were. What he did was a part of what I did.

Thus I cringed at his self-inflicted downfall, and the injustices that befell him in the wake of the emergence of his tragic weaknesses. I rooted for him against Holyfield this time, and was sad when he lost. His retirement also became a personal transformation for me---the time at which boxers of my age pass from dominance in history.

And I couldn´t help thinking: my god, this guy was good. He should have been the best ever. Or was I talking about myself. I lose track sometimes.