This film reminds me of a type of film which was popular in the
30s, then again in the 50s and 60s: the period adventure/drama in which a
completely fictional set of characters interact with well known historical
figures against a sweeping backdrop of memorable historical events. Of
course the film world didn't invent the concept. When you get right down to it,
this format has been the basis of some of the greatest fictional works in history. War
and Peace, perhaps the greatest novel of all, is such a work, as are The Three
Musketeers, Gone With the Wind, and A Tale of Two Cities, to cite a few among
many possible examples.
More specifically,
The Last King of Scotland reminds me
in many ways of an older film with a similar title: The Man Who Would Be
King. Both films are great yarns about ordinary Europeans who find themselves
getting in over their heads when they attain a surprisingly lofty position
inside a developing culture. Of course, The Last King of Scotland is a
modernization of the old format with new filmmaking ideas in a new world. The
most important new rule has been dictated by the fact that these historical
characters are within our recent memory and have been vividly recorded by the
electronic media. When The Man in The Iron Mask portrayed historical characters,
the actors were free to improvise wildly, and the authors were free to take
virtually any stance for or against the historical characters, since few people
today care whether Louis XIV is portrayed sympathetically, particularly when he
is a background character. The rules for historical drama are different when
dealing with characters from the late 20th century. People do care whether
Hitler is portrayed sympathetically, and people know exactly what he looked and
sounded like. The electronic record places a new set of demands on authors who
must spin the non-fictional characters accurately, and on actors who must look
and sound like people we have actually seen and heard. The pressure on accuracy
was even greater in this film because the African dictator Idi Amin is not a
background character, but a personal friend of the fictional character, and his
co-star. To the great credit of the writers and actor Forest Whitaker, the
film's portrayal of Amin doesn't conflict in any way with our perception of the
real man, thus freeing us to enjoy the story.
And what a story it is. A humble
Scottish country doctor decides that he doesn't want to spend the rest of his
life in a boring practice with his staid old dad, so he spins a globe, stops it
with his finger, and goes to the place where his finger happens to be pointing. Uganda is
the prize winner, and the apolitical Scotsman soon gets an education in African
power politics as he works in a clinic there. A chance occurrence vaults him
into an unexpected role as Idi Amin's personal physician, from which role he is
soon advising the strongman on health matters that affect the entire nation. Amin is a paranoid man who trusts few people, and the doctor helps him out of
few tough scrapes, so when the dictator sees that the doctor is an honest and
dedicated man with no private agenda, he is quick to take the Scot's advice on many non-medical
matters as well, including security and public relations. The humble
twenty-something white man soon finds himself the second most powerful man in
the country, and enjoys that status ... for a while.
Then he runs into that whole pesky
Dr. Faustus revelation that deals with the devil rarely work out.
The party comes to a conclusion when
the doctor finally has to stop
ignoring the evidence around him and accept the fact that his benefactor is
both corrupt and brutal. He tenders his resignation, and packs his bags. At this
point the tone of the film makes a 180 degree turn. The doctor learns that the
club he has joined is like the mafia. Once in, it's almost impossible to leave.
Furthermore, Amin no longer trusts him because of his attempt to leave, which
seems like disloyalty. Amin refuses to accept the resignation, takes away the
doctor's British passport, and issues him an Ugandan one, thus
demonstrating that his
life is owned by the dictator. From this point onward the doctor's life descends
deeper and deeper into hell. The film becomes a nail-biting thriller about his
attempt to extricate himself from the situation he has created, a predicament
made far worse by his having impregnated the dictator's youngest wife. Since the
film is a modern one and not a leftover from 1960s Hollywood, the terrifying
situations he faces are portrayed in graphically horrifying detail. I went with
my daughter, and she was looking away a lot during this movie, later commenting
that it was more tense and horrifying than any horror film she had ever seen,
especially since it all seemed real.
My daughter found the film too
intense, but I take her reaction as a sign of extremely effective filmmaking.
This is a very powerful movie. The set-up phase is interesting enough, but I
fidgeted a bit until the real movie began - when the tension started between the
doctor and the dictator. From the time of his resignation, the doctor is mired
in a hopeless quagmire of situations from which it seems he can never
escape. He feigns allegiance to Amin, all the while plotting to escape or
perhaps even to poison the dictator before he himself can be killed. The
suspense is maintained brilliantly, and the odds against him keep increasing,
particularly after he is identified as a poisoner and the real father of the
dictator's baby. Can he get out of Uganda? Well, if you want the answer to that
question, you have to see the movie ...
... and it's well worth it.
