To warn readers, and due to how I voraciously filled up my Netflix queue when I first subscribed, the next three non-AFI related selections (since I occasionally bump a movie up if it's next on the AFI list) not only revert back to Oscar nominees and winners but seem to focus on message movies about Africa. This would be the first of the three and the second overall of four, if Blood Diamond is included. Forest Whitaker won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Idi Amin, Ugandan dictator in the late 70s. I never watched the movie on release. I tend not to focus my scant (as time allows) Oscar movie watching efforts on the categories where there is no contest, and Whitaker never faced any real competition that year. I have seen four out of the five Best Actor nominated films from that year now, so it's nice to have the comparison (as a reminder, the five actors nominated were Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson; Will Smith for the The Pursuit of Happyness; Leonardo DiCaprio for Blood Diamond; Peter O'Toole for Venus; and Forest). Since this is an award from two years ago, I'll just focus on the film itself, since I also enjoy watching Oscar films a couple of years after the fact because it minimizes the effects of awards-show hype for me.
Yet, again, I digress. The Last King of Scotland is adapted from a novel of the same name. The novel chronicles the events surrounding a fictional character, a doctor Nicholas Garrigan (here played by James McAvoy, aka, Mr. Tumnus), who flees to Africa and Uganda looking for adventure and, apparently, casual sex. Hey, the plot summary above says it that way too! There, while working for a missionary doctor and becoming smitten with his wife, Sarah (Gillian Anderson, aka, Scully), Nicholas bears witness to a village rally by Amin and is taken with his charismatic words. After Amin is injured in a vehicle-on-cow collision and calls for a doctor, and since Nicholas and Sarah are conveniently close by, Nicholas comes to his rescue, having the audacity to speak strongly to Amin and use his gun on the miserable cow without permission. Afterward, Amin is taken with Nicholas and woos him into being his personal family physician. It is during his tenure that Nicholas begins to learn that he is in way over his head, especially after he takes up with Amin's wife Kay (Kerry Washington) and sees Amin for what he really is - a charming, paranoid, and murderous madman.
I have problems with this movie. Before I get to the problems, I'll focus on the positives. Forest Whitaker really was larger-than-life astounding here. I don't know much about Idi Amin, but what I do know is that it could not have been easy to get inside the head of this man who tried to talk himself into believing that killing his own countrymen and deporting certain racial and ethnic groups were all for the good of his country. Bridging the divide between mirthful chucklehead and unhinged paranoic was truly a gargantuan feat, and I think he ultimately deserved Oscar gold because no other role could have been as challenging for an actor who has not, traditionally, taken many acting risks. His performance ratcheted up the level of intensity of this film so much because he was so unpredictable, the viewer never knew where the movie or his mood was going. He stole every scene he was in, even when he was coming unglued, and the menace of his benign side was almost as terrifying as the side prone to random (and not-so-random) murders and mutilations.
The supporting performances were also good if not great. The performance of the smarmy British consul looking to exploit Nicholas' position was not good. I don't know who that guy was, but he was weird - disaffected, almost surreal, but maybe that was because he was simply a convenient plot device.
But wait, I'm focusing on the positives. The direction was decent, using a point-and-shoot documentary style at some points and, at other points, using close-ups to focus on faces and expressions of individuals in large groups listening to or supporting Amin. The unique score was interesting, blending African motifs with hard-edged Western rock in the form of punctuating electric guitar riffs. The pacing was tight - it was an action packed, engaging two hours, and for my money, this was a different film about Africa, in that it didn't focus on the plight as much as on the man responsible for the plight, with the plight being mostly hinted at until Nicholas realizes what is happening in his own mind.
But...then there are the problems, and it starts with the novel. I never read the source material, so I don't know how the characters and events were portrayed there, but the largest problem with the film is that it wanted to tell the story of the rise and fall of this dictator, I guess as a historical study. Yet, the story and the film focused almost entirely on the fictional character's experience and perspective. I read on Wikipedia that Nicholas might have been based on a real doctor (not Scottish) who served Amin, but who never had an affair with his wife and remained in Amin's employ only briefly. The film never shifted focus to Amin - Amin was, at times, a peripheral character, even though he was the antagonist of the piece. The film is told from Nicholas' observations, but he, himself, is a problematic character in that he's some sort of whiny, high-minded but hypocritical jerk, which served well to illustrate why this character might have been charmed by Amin in the first place but did not provide the viewer a sympathetic place to start. In fact, I'm not sure how to accept the point of this story overall - am I supposed to view this movie as one that offers both sides of Amin's character (though it draws a conclusion in the end)? Am I supposed to accept that Africa is just another dumping ground for Western (and, therefore, White) manipulation and colonialism (I think that was the underlying message...), even though Nicholas is just a young and naive Western transplant who doesn't understand the realities of the real world? Am I supposed to feel sorry for Mr. Tumnus or feel angry at Amin or even vice versa? Maybe I'm supposed to have all of these opinions, but that smacks of a lack of center, even if left open to interpretation.
In the end, I don't think it matters what I feel about what the movie was trying to do and say because the movie follows Nicholas, and Nicholas wasn't real, even if Amin was. And Nicholas' story wasn't complete. The entire movie offered a well-rounded, if flawed, character study of the young man until the end, and then all of the footnotes were about Amin. So, perhaps, the focus was on Amin, the self-titled "Last King of Scotland" (because he felt a kinship with the historically oppressed northern neighbor of England), but the viewer is offered so few glimpses into Amin's perspective. That's probably because no one could really know Amin's perspective, especially now since he's no longer alive.
I think the major problem I'm having with the film is that I can't accept it as a non-biased historical study, since there are clearly underlying prejudices on the part of the novelist and/or the screenwriters, and I can't accept it as a work of pure fiction because it uses events that actually happened and doesn't actually work as pure fiction. And if it's a message movie, the message is convoluted. Amin bad? White man bad? The world bad? All of the above? So, my reaction in the end can best be summed up by saying, "What's the point?"
These are strong reactions, but I tend to react stronger to a film that is as graphic as this one turned out to be. I have to understand the motivations and what the movie is trying to convey to me in order to process all of the parts, including the ones I may not have liked (and there is a particularly gruesome scene after Amin finds out about the affair). I understand that the blending of fact and fiction is a creative license on the part of the filmmakers, but my ultimate complaint is that if the license is going to be taken, there should be a center and a focus that The Last King of Scotland as a film fails to achieve because it waffles between a historical examination of a dictator, and the motivations of a man who happens to be employed by him - and the latter is more fleshed out, though not tied off in the end, like, perhaps, with some footnote about what happened to Nicholas Garrigan after the end of the movie. Forest Whitaker's performance is great, but the film is not, as I've so verbosely opined. I think in ratings land - and I find this one a tough one to call - I'm landing on a 6.5, between cute and shaky, though it strikes me that Blood Diamond was actually a better movie all in all. Maybe I need to revise that one up to a 7. In any event, this film fails the test because it was intense and graphic and frustrating, and I don't find that Forest Whitaker's performance makes up for that enough to own the film. The Last King of Scotland is a puzzling piece of filmmaking, even if it is a creative examination of world history not widely known in this day, age, and on the Western side of the world.