Occasionally a film will surprise you by getting to a familiar place via an unusual route. Cradle of Champions, Bartle Bull’s new documentary about fighters competing in New York City’s legendary amateur boxing tournament the Golden Gloves, delivers the kind of excitement, the powerful story arc, and the unforgettable characters one expects from a first rate fiction film, but it does so in the distinctively restrained and thoughtful genre of cinéma vérité.
By deploying an unusually large team of very experienced camera and sound people led by industry legend Tom Hurwitz to shoot lots of footage of the months-long Golden Gloves, Bull and ace editor Michael Levine were able to tell the intricate, multi-layered story of how two young boxers, James Wilkins and Titus Williams, went all the way from the opening rounds to the finals of the tournament.
Backed by a pair of equally interesting trainers who serve as their corner men, the duo offer an initial set of contrasts—James is white, Titus is black, James is the passionate challenger, Titus is the seasoned near-professional—that gradually gives way to the feeling that they have more in common than not. Born into humble circumstances and trained in the boroughs of New York, the men both use boxing as a way to escape their class destinies and gain access to the parts of New York that people imagine when they think of the “big city.”