Generalissimo
Poffy
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Acid
Reign.
by
Jon Dunmore © 28 May 2007.
"No
art is possible without a dance with death."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse
Five, paraphrasing Céline.Don't
know about you, but Forest Whitaker scares the shit out of me. And
as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin - fuggedaboudit! I had to watch The Last King
of Scotland from the safety of a toilet. From
Giles Foden's novel, director Kevin Macdonald scares up a visceral feast, dripping
searing fat into its blood trays; a scary fictional tale about a scarier real
dictator; a killing machine responsible for almost as many premeditated deaths
during his reign as America's 43rd President. The
tale is told from the point of view of fictional young doctor, Nicolas Garrigan
(James McAvoy, reminding us of Ewan McGregor with that Scottish accent and those
pretty, pretty eyes), who, after his graduation, jaded with his proper Scottish
upbringing and too-familiar career pathway, decides to practice in Uganda on a
whim, arriving in the African country just as Army Commander Idi Amin seizes power
from Ugandan President, Milton Obote. After
a sensual interlude with a smokin' Gillian Anderson as a married field doctor,
Nicolas, by chance, tends Amin's hurt hand, surrounded by Amin's itchy-trigger-fingered
guards (real life Ugandan militia, whose onscreen non-acting expressions reflect
their regard of Whitaker as a kind of Amin reincarnation). When Nicolas grabs
Amin's gun and shoots dead the noisy crippled ox responsible for Amin's accident
(because it would not stop lowing) for Amin, it is love at first kill. When he
discovers Nicolas is Scottish - a nationality he has an affinity towards - he
bonds with him in a surreal exchange of sweaty shirts. Soon
Nicolas is entrenched as Amin's personal physician, wooed and whirlwinded into
the inner sanctum as his most trusted aide. Thrown into the presidential high
life with tailored suits, a luxury apartment and unlimited vicarious power, Nicolas
finds it increasingly harder to recall his earlier, nobler aspirations of helping
the underprivileged of Uganda - and the gift Merc doesn't help at all…
Now
I don't want to sound too apologist for Amin, but even though the movie shows
us his mood swings (courting Nicolas with purring velvet, as is the devil's wont
when seeking our sympathy, or torturing of dissidents and voicing disapproval
with aides who soon turn up missing or dead), the movie itself acts as apologist
by giving us some small indication of how and why this ferocious leader might
have had to live by the sword. To dismiss someone as a "madman" is a
prejudice that allows our Western sensibilities to cope with a bloodthirsty idiom
far removed from our mollycoddling.
This
movie goes further than most dismissive media (even allowing Amin to shed a tear
whilst meathooking his pal's pecs!) but, being a movie, it cannot deal with every
pertinent point. It seems like Amin's coup came out of nowhere, but his
rise to power was the result of the British army bequeathing him military might;
after gaining his own political legs, Amin eventually assumed enough arrogance
to confer titles upon himself like "King of Scotland" and "Lord
of all the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes of the Sea" (almost as dumb
as "the Decider" or "the Purveyor of God's Will") and the
audacity to declare sovereignty apart from British rule and to offer himself sexually
to the Queen. Amin's
manner of dictatorship and justified paranoia was denoted by the bloody times
he lived and operated in. Realizing that his own Presidential post would probably
be snatched from him as he had snatched power from the previous President would
explain his preemptive killing of dissidents, rationalizing that he was killing
opponents to his most excellent form of government - he promised roads, schools,
health care (the same promises every leader makes and breaks, "I am just
a soldier with a concern for my country and its people") - torturing and
terrorizing his rivals "for the good of the nation." Much like the current
murderous dictator of America rationalizes his cold-blooded genocide as "spreading
democracy." Nicolas
is not exempt from Amin's rages and disparagement, ultimately seeing himself as
complicit in Amin's atrocities; having medical access means he could have killed
Amin at any time and stopped innumerable deaths. Bedding the youngest of Amin's
wives, Kay (Kerry Washington, whose bangin' butt is a sight to behold) makes Nicolas'
situation even more sticky. In a disturbing scene which will haunt your brain
corridors forever, Nicolas finds Kay's body dismembered in a dripping hospital
back room, with her arms stitched back on where her legs should be… "An
incredible person who certainly isn't mad - very shrewd, very cunning and a born
leader."
- a former British commander of Amin. "A
splendid type and a good (rugby) player, but virtually bone from the neck up,
and needs things explained in words of one letter."
- another former
British commander.
When
a sniveling British envoy (Simon McBurney) convinces Nicolas to attempt a medical
assassination, we are reminded of Kevin Spacey's dread in THE USUAL SUSPECTS,
1995: "When you shoot at the devil, what if you miss?"
Nicolas
misses. And two meat hooks later pretty much regrets buying that ticket to Uganda.
At 6'4"
the real Idi Amin Dada (1920s - 16 August 2003) was a fierce, imposing bullroarer
- and 6'2" Forest Whitaker captures the charismatic force of nature that
Amin purveyed; it is easy to see how his people admired him as a patriotic, compelling
leader: "We are a proud African nation living in peace and economic
power!" Whitaker's channeling of Amin is constantly foreboding and absolutely
magnetic (and his lazy eye makes up in ker-raziness for those two inches of height)
and though McAvoy pulls off a tremendous job as Nicolas, we cannot take our eyes
off Whitaker.
By
neglecting Britain's role in Amin's rise to power, the movie misses the analogy
to America's checkered and blowback past ("blowback" - CIA term meaning
"unintended consequences of covert operations"). Britain's enabling
of Amin was much like the American government providing arms to Osama bin Laden
and Saddam Hussein, until those ambitious leaders "democratically" opted
not to sycophant themselves to America anymore and rebelled against snide U.S.
foreign policy, at which point America scratched its head and asked, "Wha
happuh?" And
all the talk of 300,000 people being murdered during Amin's reign should be tempered
with the murders accrued by America's 2000's dictator: as a result of 2003's "Operation
Enduring Freedom" (the Pentagon's euphemism for the "war on terror,"
itself a euphemism for United States foreign policy that dictates it gain control
of Iraq's energy resources in a manner that has nothing to do with freedom or
democracy) nearly 800,000 people have been killed, and over 1.5 million injured
in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Figures compiled from British medical journal The
Lancet, the Washington Post, the US Dept of Defense and CENTCOM. References.)
Amin
may have butchered his enemies more directly, but what can be said about a coward
attacking a country who is NOT EVEN HIS ENEMY and slaying them through buffers
like a gutless cur? Witness the increasing video footage from war-torn areas of
parents carrying their limbless children through rubble, cursing America through
bloody spit. That "Butcher of Uganda" looks more and more like a pansy
when compared to the ignorant, sociopathic monster that lives in our midst. At
least when Amin dressed in full military regalia he wasn't PLAYING PRETEND. Wikipedia
has this to say about Amin: "His reign was characterized by human rights
abuses, political repression, sectarian violence and ethnic persecution."
Sound like someone familiar?
Forest
Whitaker may be scaring modern Ugandans portraying a demonic dictator from the
70s, but what should REALLY be scaring the shit out of modern Americans is the
truly insane, two-term dictator-president, George W. Bush.
END
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