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Movie Review by:
Jim "Good Old JR" Rutkowski
Directed by: Kevin MacDonald
Written by: Jeremy Brock, Peter Morgan (III), Adapted from Giles
Foden's novel: "The Last King of Scotland"
Starring: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington
Running time: 121 minutes
Released: 09/24/06
Rated R for some strong violence and gruesome images, sexual content and
language. |
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"When
Whitaker was on screen, I was riveted; when he wasn't, I
was waiting to see him again. Whitaker carries the film
on his broad shoulders..."
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In
politics, as in most other aspects of life, we make choices
and drive events either by our action or inaction -- but at
what point do the choices we make cross the line into the
realm of moral culpability? The Last King of Scotland,
directed by documentary filmmaker Kevin MacDonald, explores
this issue through the fictionalized tale ("based on true
events") of a young Scottish doctor who quite unexpectedly
finds himself the personal physician and closest adviser to
one of the world's most notorious dictators, former Ugandan
president Idi Amin. The young doctor, Nicholas Garrigan
(James McAvoy), has come to Uganda to escape the boredom and
constriction of life as a family doctor, working with his
father. Garrigan seeks adventure and excitement and, in his
spare time, wants to help make Uganda a better place, so he
goes to work in a remote medical clinic. At the clinic, he
meets Sarah (Gillian Anderson), the wife of the doctor who
runs the place, and soon becomes enamored of her.
Garrigan has come to Uganda just as the country is on the
cusp of political change: The country's president, Milton
Obote, has been overthrown in a coup by the army's chief of
staff, General Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), and Amin has
declared himself president. Chance and circumstance bring
Garrigan and Amin together; after an accident involving
Amin's motorcade and a cow, Garrigan is called upon to fix
Amin's injured hand. When no one else will kill the injured
cow, who is bellowing in pain, Garrigan snatches the
president's gun and disposes of the beast himself. Amin is
both furious that Garrigan took his gun, and impressed that
he took charge of the situation. When he finds out that
Garrigan is Scottish and not British, Amin likes him even
more -- he seems to think that he has common ground with
Scotland, since both Scotland and Uganda have freed
themselves of British rule. A few days later, Garrigan is
summoned to the presidential residence, where Amin offers
him the position of personal physician. At first Garrigan
wavers, remembering his commitment to the clinic, but soon
enough he is swayed by Amin's charismatic presence as well
as the wealth, comforts and perceived prestige of being a
close associate of the president of Uganda.
For a while, things seem to be going well for Garrigan; Amin
says he thinks of him like a son, and that Garrigan is his
closest adviser. It doesn't take long, though, for the
fraying edges of Amin's sanity to begin to unravel. Amin is
a paranoid, superstitious man who trusts no one; he is
frequently irrational and says and does bizarre things, but
because of his power and the thugs in his army, no one can
do anything to stop him. At first, Garrigan is so drawn in
by Amin's powerful presence and larger-than-life personality
that he doesn't want to see what's happening around him,
even as people who speak out against Amin disappear, and
troops slaughter citizens en masse on Amin's orders. It soon
enough becomes clear to Garrigan that he no longer has a
choice about whether to stay in Uganda or go home; Amin has
Garrigan's passport taken away, and refuses to allow him to
go home.
The Last King of Scotland is a somewhat uneven film.
Garrigan is a weak and inherently unlikeable character who
makes innumerable stupid and selfish decisions. He
apparently fancies himself a ladies' man, or at least
perceives having sex with many women to be part of his
adventure; when he turns his attentions to Kay (Kerry
Washington), Amin's third wife, you just know things aren't
going to end well. Having an affair with the wife of an
unstable and most likely insane dictator with an army of
machine-gun armed thugs at his disposal is just never a good
idea, but Garrigan is either too solipsistic or too stupid
to figure that out and this, along with almost every other
decision he makes, ultimately makes him a complicit cog in
Amin's brutal, chaotic machine.
What makes the film compelling in spite of the utter
irrationality of Garrigan's actions is Whitaker, whose
presence as Amin is unbelievably commanding. Whitaker,
always a fantastic actor no matter what role he takes on,
doesn't just act the part of Amin, he is Amin, complete with
the dictators characteristic facial expressions, gestures
and voice. The character of Garrigan exists, basically, to
allow us a window into what it might have been like to be
caught in the midst of Amin's reign of terror. The real
tragedy of this tale is not Garrigan and what befalls him,
but what Amin does to his country; as a Ugandan who came up
through the ranks of the British army, Amin initially had
the support of the British and American governments, and he
could have effected some real, long-term, positive changes
for his country. Instead, obsessed more with women, wealth
and guns than the political realities of running an
independent nation, Amin becomes increasingly paranoid, and
his actions increasingly irrational. This is the real heart
of the story of Idi Amin, and I would have liked more to
have seen the film focus on this perspective: What drove
this complex man, born poor and abandoned by his parents,
raised in the British army, which he both loathed and
adored, to become one of the world's most brutal dictators,
ultimately responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of
thousands of Ugandan men, women and children? Because we see
the story from Garrigan's perspective, the film focuses more
on his plight, the danger he's in, and the increasing
uncertainty that he will escape Uganda with his life and his
ethics intact, than on what drives Amin.
For the plot revolving around Garrigan to work, we need
Garrigan to be a character we can care about, but there is
just nothing about him that drives the viewer to feel much
sympathy for him; even as things get really bad, there's a
part of you that thinks, "Well, that's what he gets for
being so incredibly stupid." I suppose it depends upon
whether you view Garrigan as a naive innocent caught in
circumstances that escalate beyond his control, or a morally
blind, self-absorbed man-child more concerned with himself
than what he sees happening around him. In that respect,
Garrigan also serves as a symbol of white Western
involvement in African nations. There is a fine moral haze
around the issue of white Westerners trying to "better" life
in third-world countries -- by which we usually mean,
bringing life there closer to our own standards. Is it
possible that the underlying anger in Uganda over years of
British colonization contributed to allowing a man like Amin
to rule the country for eight years, terrorizing and
murdering anyone who crossed his path? Was it such a relief
for the people of Uganda to be free of British rule that
they, like Garrigan, were willing to look the other way, at
least for a while, from the methods Amin used to retain
control? And how complicit does all that make the British
government (and the American government as well) in the
bloodbath that ensued?
If you look at the character of Garrigan not so much as an
individual, but as a symbol of white colonialism, then his
lack of moral turpitude, his "taking" of Ugandan women
sexually, his own willingness to be blind to Amin's dark
side so long as he was benefiting and not in direct danger
himself, might be viewed as an allegory rather than a
character study, in which case Garrigan's lack of any real
growth becomes less relevant. Although the film's focus on
Garrigan rather than Amin weakens the story somewhat,
ultimately Whitaker's powerful and remarkable performance
makes The Last King of Scotland worth seeing. When Whitaker
was on screen, I was riveted; when he wasn't, I was waiting
to see him again. Whitaker carries the film on his broad
shoulders, creating a realistic and frightening portrait of
one of the world's most elusive and notorious figures. |
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THE LAST
KING OF SCOTLAND ©
2007 Fox Searchlight Pictures, 20th Century Fox International.
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2007 Alternate Reality, Inc. |
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