Monday 5 February, 2007

The Last King of Scotland

This weekend I went to see The Last King of Scotland, the film based on the novel by Giles Foden which came out in 1998. The film has just been released here and stars Forest Whitaker - who you would know from Ghost Dog, or his terrific portrayal of Charlie Parker, in Clint Eastwood's Bird - as Idi Amin. The very gorgeous James McAvoy plays the (fictional) Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who ends up becoming one of Amin's closest advisors. You would have last seen McAvoy playing Mr Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and in someways the moral ambivalence of Mr Tumnus prepares us for his performance as Garrigan, who Amin takes a shine to and appoints as his personal physician, and, after a point, general advisor. Garrigan is too weak and vain to resist: he lives safely in Amin's compound, swimming, drinking, running a hospital (this is the kind of thing Amin did - if he liked you, you got to run entire organizations. Until he doesn't like you any more. He manages to avoid registering the butchering that Amin has instigated. 300,000 were slaughtered between 1971 - 1979 and this film takes us up to 1976. However by the time Amin throws all Asians out of the country (in August 1972) even Garrigan can't avoid realizing something is up. The film sets this real-life event towards the it's end, so Garrigan's culpability is less reprehensible. Not that even this twist of chronology gets Garrigan off the hook (that's a pun you'll get if you see the film).

This film has fascinated me for several reasons, some I want to tease out here. It tackles the whole History/fiction debate head on: Foden has taken a real historical figure and constructed a fictional 'friend' as a way of exploring what Amin did. There has been vague talk that Dr Nicholas Garrigan was 'loosely based' on an associate of Amin's called Bob Astle but from what I can gather, that relationship is so loose as to be meaningless. It's more a case of Astle (who is still alive, and Foden interviewed) giving Foden a few ideas for characterization. The film blurs the line between history and fiction even further:'Morgan and Brock have injected love interest into Foden's original source material by making the grisly fate of Amin's third wife Kay intertwine with that of Garrigan himself, and Garrigan's sexual and political transgressions climax with two scenes of gruesome violence as the butchery and sadism of Amin's rule become all too apparent.' I am not sure what to think of this. Indeed the end of the film, and book are extremely different. Those who decide to see the film need to be aware that in it's desire to shock it's character, and the audience, out of the malaise of 'not knowing', the violence becomes unexpectedly and distressingly graphic. I thought I was going to throw up and felt like a wimp (Virginia later pointed out that because I had my eyes closed I thought things were even more extreme than were. Which is true.) - then a man behind me fainted and had to be rushed out of the cinema. So it wasn't just me.

As some critics have pointed out it could be construed as problematic that we are given a western character as a way into understanding a African political regime, but I would also argue that device allows the narrative to explore the more subtle forms of corruption we in the privileged west engage in: not seeing what is going on around us, or, if we see it, not doing anything about us. Foden himself has said'I wanted to look at the passivity characteristic of some types of expatriate life.' But I would argue (and I think Foden would too) that it's not that just expats who give over moral responsibility, though they get to be hypocritical in flashier ways.

Another thing that interested me in the film, and then with the novel, is that the central character, Garrigan, is passive. Writing about passivity is difficult. I tried it with the heroine of my novel Geography and the difficulties of doing it are why I ended up writing the novel in the first person rather than third, despite knowing that people would assume it was autobiography. Foden has also written The Last King of Scotland in the first person. It is a device which allows you to energize a character who doesn't appear to do much. In the article I link to above Foden talks about the problem of getting the film funded because Garrigan was so passive. In an interview McAvoy said there was talk in the film version, of having Garrigan engage in torture himself. But while it would have made him more 'active' it would also have made him less 'likeable'. These complications of character are why I was so fascinated with McAvoy's performance. Whitaker's performance has drawn much more attention because the charisma, horror, and sheer presence of his performance is totally breathtaking.
So, all in all, The Last King of Scotland was a film that left me thinking. About history and fiction; about the shift from novel to film; about moral culpability; about performance, and about writing; and what point violence in cinema is gratuitous rather than meaningful.

This post is crossposted at Sarsparilla.

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