The Last King of Scotland
director: Kevin Macdonald
starring:Forest Whitaker, James Mcavoy, Gillian Anderson
runtime: 121 min
[rating: 4]
Kevin MacDonald, an Oscar-winning documentary film-maker, has now put the truth on hold and come up with this film, a fictionalised account of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s relationship with a young Scottish physician, who becomes his doctor and “closest advisor” during the 1970s.
Aligning himself firmly with the ascendant genre of the “Africa Movie”, MacDonald has drenched his film in topical colour and sound: rich green and ochre dominate the beginning, before the shadows take over and reveal the dark heart of Amin, the whole backed up by bongo rhythms and black, dancing bodies.
This is, of course, the propagation of a very simplistic view of Africa, where the artist takes whatever is picturesque, makes it twirl until your eyes and ears ache, then adds a more or less timid “yes, but…” The African movie thrives, of course, on a Western point of view. This isn’t the story of Uganda, or General Amin, but that of Nicholas Garrigan.
Played by James McAvoy, this young doctor is a charming rogue who, bored at home, comes to the country in search of fun, validated by the idea of “making a difference” treating locals in a small mission. After a spirited wager for his boss’s wife (Gillian Anderson), he runs into Amin, who latches onto him like a lion and never lets go, installs him as his personal doctor and corrupts him without letting him know. At the end of his sojourn, Garrigan has directly, though not deliberately, caused two deaths.
The question of his naïve guilt is also that of Western complicity; the British government that brought Amin to power is represented only by a sleazy agent (Simon McBurney) who refuses to equip Garrigan with a life-saving new passport unless he murders Amin. Under such circumstances, it is easy to see how it would be difficult to look Africa in the eye without cowering.
This brings us to the performance of Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin – bulky, terrible, towering. There can be no conversation on equal terms with this man, and not just because the camera looks up to him, awestruck: everything he says and does is designed to ply people to his will. He correspondingly possesses a huge amount of personal charm and charisma, but Whitaker understands his character well enough to make his smiles and gestures of bonding more terrifying than any outburst. It’s all there in the split second that occurs in most conversations as you can practically see Amin deciding how to react to his protégé, processing Garrigan’s goodwill in terms of love, respect and obedience.
This makes him something of an heir to Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, though more extroverted and utterly unabashed – when he feels unloved, or betrayed, his big face fills the screen and the camera circles around him, as though he were trying to suck in each and everyone, near by or far away, to keep himself going. As Garrigan notices slightly too late, he’s a child. And a symbol for Africa’s tragedy.
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