The Last King of Scotland
A fitting match for its subject, Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland alternately charms and bludgeons, tells lucid truths and weaves fantastical fictions, walks the straight and narrow and then wanders off into the weeds.
The bulk of the movie’s factual elements deals with the very real, very human, and very monstrous Idi Amin. Not unlike the fictive Willie Stark in Steve Zaillian’s All the King’s Men, Amin sweeps into power on a wave of populist sentiment. Like Stark, he’s a plain-spoken regular Joe who has apprenticed with years in the trenches. Through both Amin and Stark, we learn the lesson of power’s corrupting influence. Unlike Stark, however, Amin is a soldier, not a politician. And this is not Louisiana, but Uganda in the 1970s, a country where misguided political alliances get you very very dead—you, and about 300,000 others.
As Amin, Forrest Whitaker is a convincing dynamo. We first encounter him in mere glimpses as the general’s troops sweep through Uganda’s 1971 countryside in a successful coup to overthrow “President for Life” Milton Obote. Next, we witness Amin’s magnetic populist appeal at a rural rally to generate support for the new government. As the years unreel, however, Amin’s promises of prosperity, roads, schools, and hospitals unravel amidst a spiraling escalation of corruption, paranoia, decadence, and isolation. As international opinion deteriorates, Amin aligns himself with Libya and the PLO. As internal opposition increases, so do reprisals and state-sponsored murder. Whitaker captures it all in a performance that’s likely bring an Oscar nomination—and deservedly so. Whitaker has not been this assured, magnetic, and compellingly watchable since Bird.
But Amin is not the center of this story. James McAvoy’s fictional doctor Nicholas Garrigan is. A patchwork composite of real-life associates of Amin, Garrigan is, in actuality, a complete invention. Yes, Amin did have a Scottish personal physician. Yes, one of Amin’s wives did have an affair with a Ugandan doctor. Yes, a British subject was one of Amin’s closest advisors.
Enter Garrigan, courtesy of the novel The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden. The son of a conservatively successful Scottish physician, Garrigan heads to Uganda upon completion of his schooling, eager to escape the driven-snow goodness that his father represents. He, too, wants to practice medicine—but he’s also looking for adventure and excitement.
He first finds it in the forbidden arms of Gillian Anderson’s Sarah Merritt, the wife of an equally upstanding clinic physician. When a chance encounter throws Amin and Garrigan together, an unlikely—highly unlikely—alliance is formed. Garrigan becomes not only Amin’s personal physician, but his closest adviser and confessor of sorts. Garrigan gains a new father figure. He also sleeps with one of Amin’s wives. Bad move.
As Amin’s administration becomes more corrupt, Garrigan’s complicity becomes more overt. In a twisted moment of admiration and fear, Garrigan willfully betrays an innocent man—and Amin knows it. From the dictator’s perspective, the doctor’s initiation is complete. “You have stepped,” Amin tells Garrigan, “deeply into the heart of my country.”
Well, he’s sure stepped deeply into something.
Naive, impulsive, foolhardy, and out of his depth, Garrigan becomes a metaphor for every international journey into the Heart of Darkness. Sure, he means well. And sure, he’s a saint compared to Amin. But the film’s opening sequences in Scotland and in the Merritts’ clinic clearly communicate that comparing oneself to a tyrant is a pretty poor measure of goodness.
As Garrigan, McAvoy shines as brightly as Whitaker. In fact, it’s hard to find anything resembling a run-of-the-mill performance in this film.
What we do find, however, aside from Whitaker’s Amin, are characters who are either difficult to take seriously or who function purely as symbols. Once the climax of Garrigan’s character arc is reached—when he freely embraces Amin as his leader-father in spite of himself—the story paints him into a corner and is left with no realistic way to deliver him. Compelling characters like Anderson’s Sarah and Simon McBurney’s British operative Nigel Stone disappear once they do their part in moving the plot forward.
Finally, the hurtling momentum of Macdonald’s film becomes wholly overwrought. In a moment worthy of the worst James Bond film, Amin’s villainous henchmen allow Garrigan to escape under the most implausible of circumstances, as if to merely deliver the moral: “Admit that you’ve made a colossal mistake, that you’re in over your head, that you’ve taken a licking, and that you have no rational exit strategy; and then get the hell out. Do things the way Daddy did. Leave a sovereign nation to work out its own affairs.”
Still, if a violent, decadent depiction of a violent, decadent despot is what you’re looking for—and especially if you like movies that don’t treat you like a complete ninny—The Last King of Scotland fills the bill.
The film is rated R “for some strong violence and gruesome images, sexual content and language”—and the rating is both fair and well-earned, though I found the film’s sexual content to be much stronger than its violence. Remember, this is a film about Idi Amin, not Captain Kangaroo.
The bulk of the movie’s factual elements deals with the very real, very human, and very monstrous Idi Amin. Not unlike the fictive Willie Stark in Steve Zaillian’s All the King’s Men, Amin sweeps into power on a wave of populist sentiment. Like Stark, he’s a plain-spoken regular Joe who has apprenticed with years in the trenches. Through both Amin and Stark, we learn the lesson of power’s corrupting influence. Unlike Stark, however, Amin is a soldier, not a politician. And this is not Louisiana, but Uganda in the 1970s, a country where misguided political alliances get you very very dead—you, and about 300,000 others.
As Amin, Forrest Whitaker is a convincing dynamo. We first encounter him in mere glimpses as the general’s troops sweep through Uganda’s 1971 countryside in a successful coup to overthrow “President for Life” Milton Obote. Next, we witness Amin’s magnetic populist appeal at a rural rally to generate support for the new government. As the years unreel, however, Amin’s promises of prosperity, roads, schools, and hospitals unravel amidst a spiraling escalation of corruption, paranoia, decadence, and isolation. As international opinion deteriorates, Amin aligns himself with Libya and the PLO. As internal opposition increases, so do reprisals and state-sponsored murder. Whitaker captures it all in a performance that’s likely bring an Oscar nomination—and deservedly so. Whitaker has not been this assured, magnetic, and compellingly watchable since Bird.
But Amin is not the center of this story. James McAvoy’s fictional doctor Nicholas Garrigan is. A patchwork composite of real-life associates of Amin, Garrigan is, in actuality, a complete invention. Yes, Amin did have a Scottish personal physician. Yes, one of Amin’s wives did have an affair with a Ugandan doctor. Yes, a British subject was one of Amin’s closest advisors.
Enter Garrigan, courtesy of the novel The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden. The son of a conservatively successful Scottish physician, Garrigan heads to Uganda upon completion of his schooling, eager to escape the driven-snow goodness that his father represents. He, too, wants to practice medicine—but he’s also looking for adventure and excitement.
He first finds it in the forbidden arms of Gillian Anderson’s Sarah Merritt, the wife of an equally upstanding clinic physician. When a chance encounter throws Amin and Garrigan together, an unlikely—highly unlikely—alliance is formed. Garrigan becomes not only Amin’s personal physician, but his closest adviser and confessor of sorts. Garrigan gains a new father figure. He also sleeps with one of Amin’s wives. Bad move.
As Amin’s administration becomes more corrupt, Garrigan’s complicity becomes more overt. In a twisted moment of admiration and fear, Garrigan willfully betrays an innocent man—and Amin knows it. From the dictator’s perspective, the doctor’s initiation is complete. “You have stepped,” Amin tells Garrigan, “deeply into the heart of my country.”
Well, he’s sure stepped deeply into something.
Naive, impulsive, foolhardy, and out of his depth, Garrigan becomes a metaphor for every international journey into the Heart of Darkness. Sure, he means well. And sure, he’s a saint compared to Amin. But the film’s opening sequences in Scotland and in the Merritts’ clinic clearly communicate that comparing oneself to a tyrant is a pretty poor measure of goodness.
As Garrigan, McAvoy shines as brightly as Whitaker. In fact, it’s hard to find anything resembling a run-of-the-mill performance in this film.
What we do find, however, aside from Whitaker’s Amin, are characters who are either difficult to take seriously or who function purely as symbols. Once the climax of Garrigan’s character arc is reached—when he freely embraces Amin as his leader-father in spite of himself—the story paints him into a corner and is left with no realistic way to deliver him. Compelling characters like Anderson’s Sarah and Simon McBurney’s British operative Nigel Stone disappear once they do their part in moving the plot forward.
Finally, the hurtling momentum of Macdonald’s film becomes wholly overwrought. In a moment worthy of the worst James Bond film, Amin’s villainous henchmen allow Garrigan to escape under the most implausible of circumstances, as if to merely deliver the moral: “Admit that you’ve made a colossal mistake, that you’re in over your head, that you’ve taken a licking, and that you have no rational exit strategy; and then get the hell out. Do things the way Daddy did. Leave a sovereign nation to work out its own affairs.”
Still, if a violent, decadent depiction of a violent, decadent despot is what you’re looking for—and especially if you like movies that don’t treat you like a complete ninny—The Last King of Scotland fills the bill.
The film is rated R “for some strong violence and gruesome images, sexual content and language”—and the rating is both fair and well-earned, though I found the film’s sexual content to be much stronger than its violence. Remember, this is a film about Idi Amin, not Captain Kangaroo.
posted by Greg Wright at 6:20 AM
1 Comments:
A good review... but what exactly is "an ordained minister of the dramatic arts"?
If ordained by a church, which church? If not, ordained by whom?
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