I've found American and European filmmakers virtually incapable of making a humane, historically accurate film about Africa. Either Western filmmakers ignore the continent entirely, or they spend all their time depicting Africa as a poverty-stricken, war-prone, disease-ridden environment with only human tragedies to report and nothing else. That is, if they focus on people at all, since the vast majority of films about Africa are about the wildlife, not the people. Obviously, Africa is a continent with extraordinary diversity and great triumphs as well as tragedies, and these narrow-minded films serve to only reinforce racist Western attitudes of superiority.Into this milieu have come a number of films about Africa lately, like The Constant Gardener and The Interpreter that I have found equally shallow. The main reason being that these are films supposedly about Africa yet only focus on the experience of white people living there, reinforcing attitudes of cultural "otherness." I can't imagine making a film about Africa and immediately casting Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, or Ralph Fiennes rather than casting an actual actor or actress from Africa. The latest film of this trend is the poorly paced, historically inaccurate, The Last King of Scotland, directed by Kevin MacDonald.
The Last King of Scotland is about a Scottish doctor named Nicholas Garrigan who fleas from his oppressive family for a new life in Uganda. He becomes a close friend and advisor to ruling dictator Idi Amin before ultimately becoming disillusioned with the tyrant's destructive policies.
This sounds like it could be the thrilling memoir of an actual physician who had this experience. The only problem is that it is entirely made up. There never really was a Nicholas Garrigan. For me this is the same problem as casting Nicole Kidman in a film about Africa. It's the prejudiced attitude that Westerners can only relate to Africa by depicting white characters' culture-conflict with actual Africans.
For me the film alternates between being clichéd and nonsensical. The opening shot is inexplicably of a group of Scottish college students in underwear jumping into a Highland loch. This leads into a derivative scene of family conflict as our protagonist Nicholas feels emasculated by his overly-controlling father in a tense dinner-table scene, and decides to flee his home life by spinning a globe and traveling to wherever his finger should land. Thus he ends up in Uganda. Do people actually live their lives by such ridiculous random chance? I really don't think so, and yet it is such an overdone concept in movies.
Once Nicholas gets to Uganda the first half of the film is extremely engrossing. The fact that two such different people as Nicholas and Amin could become great friends is a perpetually captivating theme, but certainly clichéd. I actually realized while watching the film that the narrative structure of The Last King of Scotland mirrors perfectly that of The Devil Wears Prada. Think about it: both stories are about recently-graduated, ambitious youngsters who befriend and learn from horrific, yet accomplished elders and eventually realize that their mentors are evil people. The fact that I would automatically make that comparison shows how deeply this movie fails, when it could have been so brilliant. It seems just like The Devil Wears Prada because the film gives absolutely no historical context whatsoever. We have no sense of how much time has passed, of what Amin has done for his country (whether it's good or bad), or what the people of Uganda think of Amin. In trying so hard to make this a personal tale, Giles Foden's writing robs the reader of the true drama: the actual history of Uganda in the 1970s.
Stylistically, the movie fails as well. There are terrible pacing problems in the second half of the film, mainly due to how Kevin MacDonald tried to incorporate a number of Hollywood suspense scenes that of course would never have actually happened. A scene where a character tries to assassinate Amin is particularly poorly handled, as the build-up to the climax is far too lengthy, the crosscutting disorienting and the payoff nonexistent.
The best thing about the movie, period, is Forest Whitaker's genuinely terrifying portrayal of the bizarrely erratic Idi Amin. He expresses so many emotions in this film it's hard to know where to begin. He's captivating as the incendiary firebrand, the eloquent general who rallied his country to support his coup through the power of his words. His kindly, paternal demeanor toward Nicholas is very endearing and adds great dimension to Amin, who otherwise is this kind of unknowable mythological character. And his rapid, mystifying mood shifts and rampages become terrifying when considering that he could marshal the state apparatus to satiate his gross passions and whims.
The Last King of Scotland is certainly not a kingly movie at all. It's a very shallow view of history that also doesn't work as a piece of dramatic narrative. But Forest Whitaker will always be remembered as the king of this film. His psychological darkness is the film's shining light.
The Last King of Scotland directed by Kevin MacDonald—C+
