Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy, far right), meets the entourage of president Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) in the Kevin Macdonald film, The Last King of Scotland. (Film Four/Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Forest Whitaker’s uncanny embodiment of former Ugandan president Idi Amin is the great achievement of Kevin MacDonald’s stylish drama The Last King of Scotland. At turns charismatic, cruel, boyish, cunning and paranoid, Whitaker’s Amin is dangerously unpredictable. In The Last King of Scotland, that rashness compels him to hire a young doctor named Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), whom he encounters working at a rural mission hospital, to be his private physician.
It’s easy to see why Amin likes him. Fleeing the boredom of a comfy family practice, Nicholas has come to Uganda as much for an adventure as to do good. He oozes cockiness and charm and, what’s more, he’s from Scotland, a country for which Amin feels an affinity – it’s also under the thumb of the English. For his part, Nicholas is easily seduced by the smooth-talking tyrant and the privileges of his inner circle (women, cars and wealth). Despite mounting evidence of Amin’s monstrous corruption, Nicholas is oblivious to what’s going on until he is in way over his head.
Based on the 1998 novel by Giles Fodden, the story of Nicholas Garrigan is fictional, but the historical events that it’s set against are real. While MacDonald did a brilliant job melding drama with documentary in 2003’s Touching the Void, this time out, the mix of fact and fantasy makes for uneven results. Rising star McAvoy (he also appears in Penelope and Starter For 10 at TIFF this year) does a terrific job conveying Nicholas as a symbol for Western complicity and wilful ignorance. Still, the film suffers from Cry Freedom syndrome: telling an African tragedy through the eyes of a white guy. Fictional Nicholas gets the sympathy, but the 300,000 actual Ugandans who were killed on Amin’s orders are the story’s real victims.
The Last King of Scotland opens in Toronto on Oct. 6, and across Canada on Oct. 20.
Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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