The Last King of Scotland on DVD

March 15th, 2007 in Actors, Awards, Drama, Dvd, Movies, Oscars, Reviews

I first became somewhat familiar with Idi Amin through the documentary portrait by Barbet Schroeder. I was unaware of who this African dictator was, or why he was considered important. While there were aspects of Amin that could be considered comic, I hardly found him to be as charismatic as the filmic version personified by Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.

Certainly Whitaker’s performance is powerful even on the small screen. I can only imagine that the Oscar-winning acting may have been overwhelming in theaters. The film ends with documentary footage of the real Amin which amplifies the gap between the real dictator and his screen counterpart. There is a coldness behind the eyes of the real Amin, a sense that he achieved his place through size and brute strength. As good as Whitaker is, he never fully hides his inner teddy-bear, his cuddly persona cushioned in his bulk.

Even though Whitaker is the star, the film is also about the fictionalized young doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who becomes Amin’s personal physician. James McAvoy conveys the view of the outsider in Uganda - wide-eyed with amazement and then horror, seduced by personal and political promises of Amin. Garrigan is revealed from the beginning to be less honorable than he pretends himself to be, so the story of his rise and downfall almost parallels Amin’s. While not dwelling on it, director Kevin Macdonald does not shy away from brief shots of the physical horror done by Amin’s soldiers - point blank shootings and mutalations among the common procedures.

The screenplay for The Last King of Scotland was co-written by Peter Morgan, who also wrote The Queen. While the fact that the films won Oscars for their respective stars is quite a coincidence, what both films share is an examination of how people are changed by power, whether real or illusory. Garrigan is in this way somewhat similar to Tony Blair in The Queen, as two people who are essentially outsiders become enamoured of the heads of state, the people who personify their respective countries. Certainly The Last King of Scotland demonstrates the maxim, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

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