Director: Julie Anderson, Chris Hay
Writer: Chris Hay
Stars: Bob Costas, Carl Lewis, Phil Knight
Synopsis: Definitive portrait of the iconic Olympic and World Championship gold medalist Carl Lewis.
America loves building up idols only to break them. Creating a star is the specialty, and deconstructing them is also a pleasure and an art of the American celebrity system. This is what Julie Anderson and Chris Hay’s documentary I’m Carl Lewis! explores. It follows the rise and fall of the great track and field athlete and multiple Olympic gold medalist, Carl Lewis, and shows how that reflects the times that witnessed his glory—from racial unrest and prejudice to the rise of the power of celebrity and famous sports brand collaborations.
The documentary begins at the right spot: the illusion of youth. We see Lewis at his youngest, an unstoppable force of nature; whether as a runner, sprinter, or long jumper. But then it branches out into Lewis’s own ambition as someone aspiring to rise above the racial and social status associated with him as a Black athlete. Lewis had two goals: to be a millionaire and never have to work a real job in his life. However, Lewis didn’t play by the rules that the American media set for Black athletes, which directly influenced the American public, and those rules were to remain humble, keep his head down, and bow to them.
It’s everywhere in award speeches and motivational analogies: famous people are always expected to lower their heads, cry a little, and talk about how hard the road has been and how grateful they are to everyone in their lives, starting from the school janitor and up to the highest hierarchy of whatever domain they represent. But not Lewis. He defied the norm and wanted to pave the way for other Black athletes to break out of the “humble rise of the Black man” shell, only for his ambition to backfire.
Lewis created a legacy. For people familiar with the allure of that time when he rose to the top and carried the glories of the Olympic Games while representing America, this film acts as a time machine—a nostalgic trip into a pre-social media, pre-smartphone era, when advertisements, TV, and a newly released song could change the course of history. But even for the younger generation who knows nothing about him, this documentary is an eye-opener to how much bias the media holds toward BIPOC celebrities and athletes.
The way the media, fellow athletes, and sponsors treated Lewis was unjust but also predictable of an era when bigotry was societally accepted and used as a weapon to attack men who refused to conform to traditional cultural concepts of masculinity at the time.
Unfortunately, due to its resistance to shedding light on Lewis’s personal life, the documentary falls flat at the midway point. The archival material is interesting enough, and the rise and fall of a national idol is still an intriguing angle, but it is not enough to sustain attention throughout the entire runtime. Credit should be given to the directors for chasing their passion project of interviewing their dream celebrity and trying to humanize him a little, but the lack of depth and the mystery still surrounding Lewis, despite the extensive conversations, leaves the viewer frustrated and baffled about him.
I’m Carl Lewis! doesn’t bring anything new to the table in terms of its format, but it remains faithful to its subject matter. Anderson and Hay are not there to villainize or glorify a problematic, larger-than-life figure. Does the documentary succeed in that? It works perfectly as an archival dossier of Lewis’s life, but it is less expository of his core and what his true personality is like. It’s another show for Lewis to put on in front of the camera, which now sees him as a former recipient of glory, rather than a young, wild, cocky man full of life and himself. But —as brilliantly stated in Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight— who is you, Carl Lewis?
Sadly, that remains a mystery to be solved some other day.
