The Last King of Scotland
I saw The Last King of Scotland and felt like writing a proper all formal-style movie review. There might be some light spoilage if you haven’t seen the film. Oh, and one thing unmentioned below is that one of my best friends is in the movie as an extra – he lived in Uganda when it was filmed – and he’s clearly visible at several points in a press conference scene, so that was a little thrill to see. Also unmentioned is all the great African pop & funk on the soundtrack, including this old fave.
The Last King of Scotland
Writers and filmmakers have a special fondness for the neutral bystander who’s drawn into the orbit of power; it allows the audience a glimpse of outsized ambition, or even evil, from a semi-comfortable distance. (Think of the Jack Burden character in Robert Penn Warren’s recently refilmed novel All the King’s Men.) That’s certainly the setup in The Last King of Scotland, a film about the reign of an African dictator as seen by a young Scottish man who joins the strongman’s inner circle.
The dictator here is a real-life one: Idi Amin, who ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979 – years of repression, economic ruin, the exile of tens of thousands of citizens, and the murder of hundreds of thousands more. As played – brilliantly – by Forest Whitaker, Amin is a fascinating character, wearing a mask of good-natured, fun-loving charm overtop petulance and monstrous rage. With every ripple of his expression, Whitaker reveals waves of powerlust and paranoia, insecurity and sentimentality. The Last King of Scotland owes much of its power to his performance.
But although the milieu is historical and the film bears an “inspired by true events” tag, its central conceit is actually a fictional one. Based on a novel by Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland imagines a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who comes to Uganda seeking experience and adventure and, through a series of coincidences, ends up serving as Amin’s personal physician and advisor. Garrigan is allegedly a composite of several real people, but the one most often cited as the direct inspiration, Bob Astles, seems to have little to do with the man in the movie.
We meet Garrigan in a series of brief, brutally expository opening scenes, so single-minded in simply conveying information that they might as well have been replaced by a scrolling summary a la Star Wars. The shaggy-haired Scot graduates from med school, ponders with dread a life spent in co-practice with his domineering doctor father, and sets out for Africa more or less at random. (He spins a globe and tells himself he’ll go where his finger lands, but when it lands on “Canada” he gives it a second try.)
Once in Uganda, though, director Kevin Macdonald shows better pacing and command. Best known for the excellent mountain-climbing documentary Touching the Void, Macdonald is making his fiction-film debut here, and he filmed on location in Uganda. His sometimes-jittery camera captures both the beauty of the landscape and a sense of heat-addled anxiety, which allows Macdonald to build narrative momentum nicely without entirely sacrificing atmosphere.
Settled in Uganda, Garrigan begins practicing at a small rural hospital staffed by one other doctor, and he also begins a campaign to seduce the other doctor’s wife, the idealistic but emotionally frazzled Sarah (Gillian Anderson). Curious about this General Amin who’s just seized power, Garrigan drags Sarah to a rally at the nearby village, and on their way home they’re stopped by soliders looking for a doctor. It seems Amin has sprained a hand and needs some quick treatment. Amin is entranced by the young doctor’s pluck and, well, Scottishness, and soon enough Garrigan is installed in Kampala as one of the dictator’s most trusted aides. (A lover of Scot culture, Amin named his children Campbell and Mackenzie and once proclaimed himself the last king of Scotland.)
The problem with all this is that the Garrigan character at the centre of the film is completely hollow. The blame for this lies both in the script and in star James McAvoy’s performance. From the start, McAvoy plays the doctor as a dim-witted, smirking jackass; yes, he’s supposed to be sheltered and naïve, but it’s simply impossible to credit the extent of his shallowness and stupidity. He’s a young Scot in a strange country that’s just been taken over in a military coup, and soldiers are strutting around brandishing submachine guns, yet he shows no hint of unease – at that rally, he merrily woo-woos as if he’s at a rock & roll show. In another even more unbelievable scene, as Garrigan is treaing Amin for the first time, in a burst of irritation he grabs the dictator’s handgun and shoots a bellowing cow, despite the fact that several of Amin’s bodyguards are pointing rifles at him at the time.
Garrigan is so removed from reality that the central dynamic of the film never coalesces. He’s supposed to be seduced by power, but he lacks the brainpower and moral agency to actually be seduced. Instead he just falls into Amin’s inner circle, obliviously enjoys the high life for a little while (lots of poolside scenes and big-collared 1970s outfits), and gradually – very gradually – realizes that he’s working for a brutish madman. A subplot about Garrigan’s affair with one of Amin’s wives (warmly played by Kerry Washington) is contrived, but it’s obvious why it was included – it does at least lend a little moral urgency to Garrigan’s situation.
To Macdonald’s credit, the last third of the movie is tense and suspenseful, and the script cleverly works the real-life 1976 hostage standoff at Uganda’s Entebbe airport into the climax. There are also a couple of brutally violent scenes that, while they may be hard to watch for some, are appropriate in finally bringing Amin’s madness home to Garrigan.
But the resolution of it all is still less than satisfying. At the end of the film, Garrigan is rescued by an altrusitic Ugandan doctor desperate to help his nation – an episode that only makes us wish we’d been following that guy around for the past two hours. Instead, The Last King of Scotland positions Uganda’s national tragedy as the road to redemption for one dumbass white man.
30
- Hugh Masekela, “Grazing in the Grass”
The Last King of Scotland
Writers and filmmakers have a special fondness for the neutral bystander who’s drawn into the orbit of power; it allows the audience a glimpse of outsized ambition, or even evil, from a semi-comfortable distance. (Think of the Jack Burden character in Robert Penn Warren’s recently refilmed novel All the King’s Men.) That’s certainly the setup in The Last King of Scotland, a film about the reign of an African dictator as seen by a young Scottish man who joins the strongman’s inner circle.
The dictator here is a real-life one: Idi Amin, who ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979 – years of repression, economic ruin, the exile of tens of thousands of citizens, and the murder of hundreds of thousands more. As played – brilliantly – by Forest Whitaker, Amin is a fascinating character, wearing a mask of good-natured, fun-loving charm overtop petulance and monstrous rage. With every ripple of his expression, Whitaker reveals waves of powerlust and paranoia, insecurity and sentimentality. The Last King of Scotland owes much of its power to his performance.
But although the milieu is historical and the film bears an “inspired by true events” tag, its central conceit is actually a fictional one. Based on a novel by Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland imagines a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who comes to Uganda seeking experience and adventure and, through a series of coincidences, ends up serving as Amin’s personal physician and advisor. Garrigan is allegedly a composite of several real people, but the one most often cited as the direct inspiration, Bob Astles, seems to have little to do with the man in the movie.
We meet Garrigan in a series of brief, brutally expository opening scenes, so single-minded in simply conveying information that they might as well have been replaced by a scrolling summary a la Star Wars. The shaggy-haired Scot graduates from med school, ponders with dread a life spent in co-practice with his domineering doctor father, and sets out for Africa more or less at random. (He spins a globe and tells himself he’ll go where his finger lands, but when it lands on “Canada” he gives it a second try.)
Once in Uganda, though, director Kevin Macdonald shows better pacing and command. Best known for the excellent mountain-climbing documentary Touching the Void, Macdonald is making his fiction-film debut here, and he filmed on location in Uganda. His sometimes-jittery camera captures both the beauty of the landscape and a sense of heat-addled anxiety, which allows Macdonald to build narrative momentum nicely without entirely sacrificing atmosphere.
Settled in Uganda, Garrigan begins practicing at a small rural hospital staffed by one other doctor, and he also begins a campaign to seduce the other doctor’s wife, the idealistic but emotionally frazzled Sarah (Gillian Anderson). Curious about this General Amin who’s just seized power, Garrigan drags Sarah to a rally at the nearby village, and on their way home they’re stopped by soliders looking for a doctor. It seems Amin has sprained a hand and needs some quick treatment. Amin is entranced by the young doctor’s pluck and, well, Scottishness, and soon enough Garrigan is installed in Kampala as one of the dictator’s most trusted aides. (A lover of Scot culture, Amin named his children Campbell and Mackenzie and once proclaimed himself the last king of Scotland.)
The problem with all this is that the Garrigan character at the centre of the film is completely hollow. The blame for this lies both in the script and in star James McAvoy’s performance. From the start, McAvoy plays the doctor as a dim-witted, smirking jackass; yes, he’s supposed to be sheltered and naïve, but it’s simply impossible to credit the extent of his shallowness and stupidity. He’s a young Scot in a strange country that’s just been taken over in a military coup, and soldiers are strutting around brandishing submachine guns, yet he shows no hint of unease – at that rally, he merrily woo-woos as if he’s at a rock & roll show. In another even more unbelievable scene, as Garrigan is treaing Amin for the first time, in a burst of irritation he grabs the dictator’s handgun and shoots a bellowing cow, despite the fact that several of Amin’s bodyguards are pointing rifles at him at the time.
Garrigan is so removed from reality that the central dynamic of the film never coalesces. He’s supposed to be seduced by power, but he lacks the brainpower and moral agency to actually be seduced. Instead he just falls into Amin’s inner circle, obliviously enjoys the high life for a little while (lots of poolside scenes and big-collared 1970s outfits), and gradually – very gradually – realizes that he’s working for a brutish madman. A subplot about Garrigan’s affair with one of Amin’s wives (warmly played by Kerry Washington) is contrived, but it’s obvious why it was included – it does at least lend a little moral urgency to Garrigan’s situation.
To Macdonald’s credit, the last third of the movie is tense and suspenseful, and the script cleverly works the real-life 1976 hostage standoff at Uganda’s Entebbe airport into the climax. There are also a couple of brutally violent scenes that, while they may be hard to watch for some, are appropriate in finally bringing Amin’s madness home to Garrigan.
But the resolution of it all is still less than satisfying. At the end of the film, Garrigan is rescued by an altrusitic Ugandan doctor desperate to help his nation – an episode that only makes us wish we’d been following that guy around for the past two hours. Instead, The Last King of Scotland positions Uganda’s national tragedy as the road to redemption for one dumbass white man.
30
posted by DW | 15.10.06
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