Kassim the Dream

A boxer’s sobriquet is usually nothing more than an attempt to set himself apart from the crowd of contenders and to give him something catchy to embroider on his shorts. For Kassim “The Dream” Ouma, however, life itself must seem to be a waking dream at times, ricocheting back and forth from nightmare to fantasy:  born in Uganda and abducted from school when he was six by militant rebels, Ouma was forced to do horrific things that haunt him into adulthood.  As director Kief Davidson introduces us to the adult Ouma, an apparently happy and successful athlete, it quickly becomes clear that the old wounds are still fresh. Ouma confides to the camera that boxing is his therapy, and as we learn more about what he was forced to do as a child (kill, torture, intimidate), we understand how the brutal sport could actually be a refuge.  As a boy growing up in the army, boxing offered him not only a way to cope with the multitudinous traumas he endured, but also a means to escape.  After somehow defecting to the United States, he managed to further his boxing career until he was able to contend for the light middleweight championship belt.  Flanked by a manager, promoter, and various hangers-on, Ouma would seem to be an extreme example of the American Dream, a boy who started with worse than nothing and managed to elevate himself to the upper echelon of his profession. The bitter reality of his life, however, is that those early abuses will never go away, no matter how many knockouts he records, or how glamorous his new life in America becomes.

It is this juxtaposition that is Davidson’s greatest asset and greatest liability as he attempts to create a compelling documentary.  The simple approach would have been to present Ouma’s story as a “that was then, this is now” narrative arc, in which the audience sympathized with his troubled past and then rooted for his success in the ring as the Big Fight approached. Instead (perhaps because real life is never so simple), Davidson weaves the two narratives together, and in so doing diffuses the drama of both.  As he cuts back and forth from boxing scenes to interview segments of Ouma talking about his past, the importance of boxing is greatly diminished.  And when Ouma travels back to Uganda after finally obtaining a presidential pardon (as a deserter, he would have been arrested and put to death without one), we see the hundreds of children who were not able to flee the country, and suddenly his life doesn’t seem so horrible. Additionally, neither the "boxing champion" nor the "conquering personal demons" narrative has a satisfying conclusion:  Ouma loses the biggest fight of the film, and, while he is able to return to Uganda to see his grandmother and lay flowers on the grave of his father, he cannot bring her home with him, bring him back to life, or save the hundreds of children who are as he once was.  Like two opposing waves, these dramatic story arcs cancel out the energy of the other.

Still, it is impossible not to root for Ouma and, by extension, for this film.  What he went through as a child was horrible, and what he accomplished as an adult is inspirational.  The footage meant to represent his past in Uganda is beautifully shot, and creates a vivid sense of time and place that stands in stark contrast to Ouma’s current life in the United States.  In some ways, his life would seem to be a much more powerful Rocky tale. Unlike Rocky, however, the narrative elements, and how the audience should feel about them, are not so obvious.  Does he deserve complete forgiveness, in spite of his horrible deeds?  Why does his boxing matter at all in this context? Unfortunately, these are questions that go largely unanswered, leaving the audience feeling both affected and conflicted.

                                       Orson Robbins-Pianka