The Fever Dream of Africa

Friday night may not be the time to see a movie in Bayswater, but Sunday afternoon works. Today the film was The Last King of Scotland. My anticipation level was high. Not only had I read Giles Foden’s original novel a few years back, I knew a little of Amin’s real story thanks to my studies of seventies terrorism and MI6 in Africa as well as enduring having had a Ugandan war criminal as a driver.

If for nothing else, The Last King of Scotland will be remembered as Forrest Whitaker’s finest two hours. Whitaker gives us Amin the charmer; Amin the casually, caustically violent; Amin the victim of his own paranoia; Amin the man trying to project modernity and calm whilst ruling with a heart of darkness. At points, despite his annoying failure to use the thick African syntax of the General, Whitaker is so convincing that when the film credits role and pictures and film of the real Amin appears, there is almost no dissonance between the two.

Last King of Scotland will also be seen as the film in which James McAvoy emerged as one of the talents of his generation. He is profoundly convincing as Dr. Nicholas Garrigan – the callow public schoolboy with the additional character blights of the arrogance of youth and the misplaced superiority of a white man in Africa. It is not the easiest of roles to play as he has to try making the audience care about a middle class prick who as Amin says: “Is like every other white man in Africa who comes to fuck and take away.”

The dance of their two characters is a car crash in slow motion – an obvious theme right from the start as it is an automobile accident that conspires to bring them together – but Whitaker and McAvoy make sure you never lose interest in increasingly bleak spiral of events.

Although Whitaker has to be the most obvious Oscar contender this year, the true star of the movie is Uganda itself. Shot on location with a City of God –hue, when director Kevin MacDonald lets a sense of place infuse the film, it really comes alive. It is at these points you can feel just far from his home, safety and his European certainties Garrigan has come. However, Uganda is not used enough and that is emblematic of one of the film’s biggest flaws – there is just not enough of an African context.

Given the films themes, it is too lazy to allow its implied suggestion that despotism and violence are the accepted way of Africa without any examination of why. There is not enough Ugandan political or geo-political background. From the film you would never understand why the British Secret Intelligence Service wanted Amin dead or why he was so paranoid that he would be overthrown – a great failing when those two facts are used a key drivers of its narrative.

The actual history of Amin and Uganda during his rule is even more complex than hinted at in Foden’s original story. While MacDonald has made a relatively subtle film, its typically Hollywood brevity of character and linear narrative constrains any real attempt to look at many of the issues it raises. The atrocities committed against the Ugandan people, the 300,000-500,000 victims killed during Amin’s rule – these often seem peripheral as does the eviction of the Indian population which only gets a tepid nod.

There is never any sense of why Amin, who began his reign as a recognised force for good, descended into barbaric horror. There is not even a stab at explaining why Amin went from being described by the British Foreign Office as: “A splendid type and a good footballer” to him giving himself the title of ‘Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular’. That failure to touch on real life intricacies means despite the undeniable power of Whitaker’s performance, Amin often seems either a creature of pure vicious instinct or merely idiotic. Whatever else Amin was, he was not an idiot. You do not hold power in Africa for eight years when the superpowers are trying to destabilise you unless you have some smarts.

The film features some nice support from Gillian Anderson who manages to sound convincingly English and Simon McBurney as an odious little shit of British spook. However, one of the problems with such a strong two-hander is the compression of the secondary characters. There are good acting performances on display amongst the supporting ranks, but there is clearly not enough for them to work with. This problem is compounded by the fact that the cast of characters surrounding Amin is so poorly drawn. Too many of the Ugandan characters ended up as ciphers or mere plot movers-on of plot, which again seems to stem both from a failure to risk complexity and give the movie its African head.

The failure to let Africa come through and be more a central element of the story and the visuals is incredibly frustrating One of the most striking scenes in the film is when Gillian Anderson’s character is driving Dr. Garrigan down red dust roads at night, occasionally dodging people on foot who loom up like anaemic ghosts in her truck’s headlights. It is brief, but with great economy that image, strange spirits of death walking the roads under cover of darkness, resonates with the fever dream of Africa and of Amin’s dark reign more than anything else in the film. However, elsewhere such trite, tired clichés as a ‘witch doctor’ shaking a rattle and a close-up of a mosquito sucking blood are trotted out, MacDonald trying to pass them off as significant African symbols. Rarely did Last King of Scotland hit an African truth, though a line delivered by Amin ought to go on the box as a warning for a lot of African adventures: “You came to Africa to play the white man. But we aren't a game. We’re real. This room is real. And when you die, it will be the first real thing you have done.”

One of the films few clear triumphs is its soundscape. It is veers from unrelentingly brutal – the cries of grief echoing up hospital stairwells, bottles smashing, flesh being punctured, the staccato punch of gunshots and blind panic of a car in reverse – to a joyous, expansive pleasure in Ugandan traffic noise, reflecting the perspective of a country at the time where progress was symbolised by a city having enough motor vehicles to suffer a traffic jam. As the lead character becomes engulfed in the Amin’s paranoia and the horror it brings to pass, the soundscape of the film becomes increasingly tight and claustrophobic. The relief you feel when the jet engines scream on take off at end of the film is corporeal. You have heard so much for the last two hours, all you want to do is close your eyes and drift into the oblivion of sleep, lulled by the constant drone of an aircraft in flight.

The actual soundtrack of the film is more mixed. I would be almost be tempted to buy the album of it for the most insane interpretation of The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond I have ever heard and Angela Kalule’s wonderful version of Me and Bobby McGee. At its best, there are tracks used which approach the insane genius of African psychedelic classics such as Love Is A Real Thing. However, there is also a lot of dull, twee nonsense that you would normally only ever encounter on the most boring anthropological field recording from the 1930s left in the forgetfulness of a university library. The original Alex Heffes pieces would also stand a listen stripped of the movie context. Although surprisingly traditional film score given the other musical styles they often rise from and fall back into, his contributions helped focus the tourniquet atmosphere and added emotional depth at key moments.

The film’s surprises – its use of humour during the first hour when Garrigan is being seduced into the heart of Amin’s world, its bursts of hallucinatory colour and the sheer convincing power of the lead performances – won me over long before my irritations at its shortcomings became too naked. As a vehicle for demonstrating Whitaker and McAvoy’s ability to act, there is no doubt that Last King of Scotland is perfect. However, the movie never escaped from a decision to frame it as thriller, leaving us with something that is taut, but painfully predictable. This is shame. I wanted so much more than a 'how will the idiot white boy escape from the dangerous dictator' story.