The Last King Of Scotland

My instinct was to come home from our preview screening of The Last King Of Scotland and write about it immediately, so that everything I was thinking about the film would be fresh in my head and not get lost or corrupted during the overnight while I slept; and that was what I tried to do, except that I knew I would get it wrong, because I had not finished reading the novel yet. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to watch the movie before I finished the novel, but I went ahead and saw it, anyway. I’ve been looking forward to the film since I saw the trailer for the first time and realized that this was probably a role that Forest Whitaker was going to own. I wanted desperately to write about it right away, but nothing I wrote that night really made any sense.

Now, two nights later I have read about half of the novel (I was maybe fifty pages into it when I saw the movie - and it should be noted that I am rarely in the middle of only one book at any given time; for instance, I was already in the middle of iWoz, a new book by Steve Wozniak, the lesser known of the two Steves who built Apple Computer, and Atlas Shrugged when I started The Last King Of Scotland) and am very glad I chose not to post anything on this film before now.

The Last King Of Scotland tells two stories, which are interrelated: one is the story of Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor who goes to Uganda to practice medicine in order to get out from under the thumb of his father; and the other is the story of the rise to power of Idi Amin, the charming and paranoid Ugandan dictator who came to power and was ousted from same within the decade of the 1970s.

The two types of media, however, tell stories that vary so widely as to be almost different stories altogether - as if, perhaps, the novel had been re-imagined rather than simply adapted for the screen. The novel tells the story at a much slower pace (the scene where Amin hits a cow with his Maserati and is attended to by Garrigan occurs within minutes of the beginning of the film, but not until a third of the way into the novel) and provides more of a picture of the daily routine of practicing medicine where it is most needed in the world - a place like Africa, where there are far too many who have far too little; by contrast, the film moves from set piece to set piece at a nearly frantic pace, but manages to maintain consistency and cohesion.

The novel manages to tell several stories - one about Garrigan, one about Africa, and one about Idi Amin. The film, on the other hand, focuses almost entirely on Amin, to its credit. Too often, filmmakers try to make movies out of books while remaining too faithful to the source material, without taking into account the fact that a novel is made to be read slowly, while a film is meant to be digested much more quickly. Now, this is not to say that you can’t have very fast-paced books or slower-paced films and have each be very good; it is simply to say that some things work better on the printed page than they do on the big screen. The novel version of The Last King Of Scotland would not have worked as well as a movie if it had been adapted more faithfully. That said, once you have seen the film, run right out and get the novel from the library, or pick up a copy at your local bookstore; you’ll be amazed at the differences. There are always differences between a novel and the movie that is made from it, but the differences here are remarkable, both in quantity and quality; and the most amazing thing of all is that all of those changes work. The film is a triumph.

Forest Whitaker turns in an acting performance that should be talked about, if there is any justice in the world, in the same way that Anthony Hopkins’ performance in The Silence Of The Lambs was (and still is) talked about, in the same way that people still talk about Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, and Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. Whitaker does not just portray Amin; he is Amin. This is, of course, conjecture on my part, to some extent; I never met Idi Amin, and so cannot really say if Whitaker is Amin or not. However, I never once saw Forest Whitaker while I was watching this movie (and have seen Good Morning Vietnam enough times to know what I’m talking about); all I saw was the character, a man who thrusts himself into power with the best of intentions, and then falls, perhaps inexorably, given the often arbitrary and capricious nature of power in African countries, into paranoia and then madness, which combine to destroy first the man and then his country, along with not a few of the people closest to him - of which Garrigan becomes one. What becomes of the ordinary Ugandans who suffer Amin’s tenure as their leader is even more unspeakable.

Is the historical figure of Idi Amin to be pitied? Certainly not. But ruthless, terrible people never begin that way - they wind up that way, by all sorts of causes. There is a tragedy to all of them, a tragedy that can only be seen by those who watch them fall; and this is what we see in this film, through the eyes of Dr. Garrigan - the fall of a giant of a man who never really had a chance to be what he wanted to be. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, it does so even more horribly in situations and places where power itself is but an illusion. To render such horror into high art is a remarkable achievement.

The Last King Of Scotland will win two Oscars, one for Forest Whitaker for Best Actor, and the other for Jeremy Brock, Peter Morgan, and Joe Penhall for Best Adapted Screenplay, based on the novel by Giles Foden. It should also be nominated for Best Picture, though I cannot say that a win is assured, as too many of the Oscar-caliber films have not yet come out.