>>PREVIEW
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
STARRING Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy and Gillian Anderson
DIRECTED BY Kevin Macdonald
Opens Friday, January 19
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Idi Amin’s affinity for kilts, single malts and all things Scottish is one of the least known aspects of the Ugandan general’s reign of terror. However, it’s part of what draws together the two protagonists in Kevin Macdonald’s pulpy, exciting adaptation of The Last King of Scotland, Giles Foden’s not-quite-historical novel about Amin’s relationship with a young Scottish doctor.
Out for a Third World adventure, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) arrives in Uganda not long after the Amin-led coup in 1971. He soon settles into his work in a rural hospital, though Garrigan’s designs on a lonely doctor’s wife (Gillian Anderson) are the first indication of the character’s moral flexibility. After a fortuitous meeting with the immensely charismatic general (Forest Whitaker), Nicholas becomes Amin’s new physician. Really, he’s more like a house pet, Nicholas is seduced by the allure and excitement of life in the inner circle.
Outsized yet remarkably precise, Whitaker’s performance gives the film enormous energy. Yet McAvoy’s role is nearly as interesting, seeing as it frustrates the inclination of western (read: white) audiences to identify with him. Really, he’s an amoral prat who’s too busy romancing one of Amin’s wives (Kerry Washington) to acknowledge the horrors in which he is increasingly complicit.
Turning to fiction after superb docs like One Day in September and Touching the Void, Macdonald presents the story as a punchy, lurid thriller – a treatment that sometimes makes the movie seem exploitative or, worse yet, more concerned with the guilty feelings of privileged whites than the sufferings of poor Africans. But the film’s sheer ballsiness is beyond dispute.
Macdonald explains his fascination with Amin. Says the director, "Amin is such an extraordinary, gripping character because he combines so many different facets in a single human being – he’s so contradictory. He was also such a large cultural figure at the time. There were books and songs written about him – he captured everyone’s imagination. Even Saturday Night Live used to do an Amin character in the ’70s. I think he was the most famous African ever in history until Nelson Mandela was released from prison – I say this to people without any objective evidence, but nobody’s argued with me yet."
The reasons why Amin had such a cultural impact are clear to Macdonald.
"He embodied our greatest fears about Africa and yet we could belittle him through humour because he was humorous as well," he says. "He was the cannibal, the man who ate his archbishop’s liver, the man who did these crazy things. He was the ultimate embodiment of the western idea of the savage king."
Yet, The Last King of Scotland also critiques the west’s complicity in Amin’s rise to power. For all his appeal as the film’s nominal hero, Garrigan embodies many of the least attractive qualities of the old empire to which he belongs.
"People tell me Nicholas is not that likeable," says Macdonald with a laugh. "That’s the point. He’s an anti-hero and he does represent us in our relationship with Africa in a way. When Idi Amin says, ‘You’re like all the other English here – you’re just here to fuck and take away,’ you think, yes, he sort of is. That is the relationship of the west with the Third World. I keep telling the studio that the film has a youth audience because this is about backpackers, too – it’s about kids who go off to the Third World to have a good time and find themselves then take their experiences home. Nicholas is exactly that character."
As for the garrulous yet extremely lethal Amin, Whitaker gives one of the year’s most startling performances. In retrospect, he seems like the only actor who could’ve pulled off the role, yet Macdonald was originally hesitant about auditioning him.
"I liked his work, but he’s such an internal actor," says Macdonald. "He’s got charm, yeah, but it’s a quiet, sweet charm. I’d never seen him be explosive in the way Amin has to be, so I’d kind of written him off before I met him. But he came into the room and he talked so compellingly about Amin – the strange empathy he had for the character was already apparent. Then he did a scene and he scared the living bejesus out of me right there and then. Before he did that, he said to me, ‘You don’t believe I’ve got the anger in me to do this. Let me tell you – I’ve got more anger than most people.’
"But even when he’s at his most aggressive and most terrifying," Macdonald adds, "his performance is nuanced and layered with vulnerability and this childlike quality that Forest always has. That makes it more real and more terrifying. He feels like the kind of people you’ve met in your life who make you go, ‘Shit, this guy could go off.’" |
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