Screengrab editor emeritus Bilge Ebiri reports from the frontlines of Park City.
James Toback has always seemed like a documentary filmmaker trapped in a narrative filmmaker’s body. The most exciting parts of his films have always been those moments when reality intrudes: Mike Tyson suddenly punching out Robert Downey, Jr., in Black and White immediately comes to mind, but there are others. So it comes as little surprise that the maverick director’s documentary portrait Tyson might just be the best thing he’s done to date. Featuring an extended interview with the former heavyweight champ at his most candid and eloquent, Tyson is unafraid to just put its subject center stage and let him go.
Toback does give us archival footage of Tyson’s famous fights, as he should, and the sight of Tyson at the height of his powers, like a small hurricane of anger let loose in the ring, still carries with it an extraordinary charge. And this is where Toback’s narrative skills come into play: Archival footage plays out almost as if we’re watching Iron Mike’s own memories, and it helps give his journey shape.
Tyson admits that he’s a recovering addict, and one wonders to what extent Toback, a man who’s famously struggled with his own addictions over the years, is using the film as a kind of exorcism of his own demons. But there’s something genuinely confrontational about the way Toback films the champ. Tyson talks about all the ways in which he’s changed, and insists on a newfound humility, but Toback’s direct style suggests that the filmmaker doesn’t see him as a fallen, broken soul at all. With this film, Mike Tyson becomes yet another of the unapologetic fuck-ups that people Toback’s films. Iron Mike may be repentant, but Toback seems to suggest that it was all worth it for the story. He might just be right.
