The Last King of Scotland...

As a character who on paper is solely a metaphor for Western intervention, McAvoy's Garrigan is really rather well fleshed out. Got to say though I was sold on the film from the moment they played Toko by Momo Wandel Soumoh on the soundtrack (about ten minutes in) what with it being probably my favourite Africa piece of music.

*Not necessarily a good thing.

xpost

Erm, you do realise that bit did actually happen?

that was the sound of it zooming over my head :-)

Not like that at all!

Pete, soundtrack was so good I bought it the next day. Still waiting for it to be delivered. Such a moron, should have just gone to HMV!

*New Sight And Sound also good on suggesting Ferris Beullers Day Off is just as appropiate as best film ever Citizen Kane.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1993018,00.html

i don't know what to make of this sort of stuff:

"Amin is believed to have killed at least 300,000 people - but does that give carte blanche to the film-makers to play to some of the worst stereotypes of corrupt, murderous, incompetent and ridiculous black leaders?"

oh man, will they ever stop stereotyping historical figures?

"Moviegoers want to watch people they are interested in: themselves [O RLY?]; and they demand the all-important catharsis at the end of a film to provide them with a new understanding about who they are [O RLY?]. And since the majority of the western film-going public is white, then that self on screen must also be white."

"Little light is shed on Amin himself. Granted, he has a few moments of paranoid vulnerability and an explanation for his behaviour - that he was mistreated by the British during his years in the army. But these are the darkest shades of grey. His black power rhetoric is dismissed as cheap talk to excuse his violence."

there's another kind of racism going on here.

Actually the film is much clearer that Amin is able to get into this position with British backing, who then flip-flop. Whilst I tend to agree that the white protagonist in African story trope is often regretable, you cannot disregard the effect of white post-colonial meddling (and money) in the area. McAvoy's Garrigan is not a hero, and pays a price (though perhaps not as bad as many others) for his fannying around.

Whittaker is seductive though, which is why this is a massive step forward from previous Western portrayals of Amin. So of course the film is flawed but it clearly has thought about these flaws. It uses the cinema language of films about Africa intelligently and knowingly (there are hallucination sequences which are hokey, but not unlike Shaft In Africa, and the Deep Throat moment follows directly after to contextualise it I think). Could we also complain that the film is predominantly in English and the main actors are American or English. Of course we can. Film making is a trade off, and whilst it is fine we can have articles like this pointing it out, the fact that the film exists is better than it not existing I reckon.

(Also: Hotel Rwanda. Hero of which is black, plainly ignored in this rundown.)

Word. It preemptively makes itself plainly the best of all the Rwanda films, with all the others seemingly having whitey running around trying to save Africa.

Unfortunately his pubperpetuality means that the timescale over which the film is set (about five years) is a touch obscured.

-- Pete (pb1...), January 23rd, 2007 11:10 AM. (Pete) (later)

doesn't the other the doctor urge him to go so he can tell the world??

OTM - Couldn't believe it was 15 here but I've learned that the censor's office is a fickle thing!

How much of this is actually based on his book, I wonder?

It's based in Uganda, a yound scottish doctor meets Idi, things go wrong. That's about it really, it's in the details that it really differs!

Another thing - Gillian Anderson was terrific in the few bits she was in.

urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh, did you have to put it that way?

Nevertheless, I thought this film was absolutely phenomenal. After it finished I just stared silently at the screen for five minutes. It was done in a brilliantly modern style, with a soundtrack that mixed in a bit of everything, electro pulses meeting tribal dance, with some AWESOME acting all-round, a great story, and most importantly one of the most gripping final hours I've seen in film.

Best bit? McAvoy's phone conversation with Anderson, when you can hear a baby crying during McAvoy's segments. The conversation ends, we cut to Anderson, and the baby's crying there rather than at the big central hospital.

The scenes of torture and mutilation were just horrifying, and if this is rated 15, well, no film should be 18, frankly.

Another thing - Gillian Anderson was terrific in the few bits she was in.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2167426,00.html

quite stoked for this, loved the series.

retain bill nighy tho.

My initial kneejerk reaction from the trailer: Enormous African drama made 'accessible' by presence of white dude - fuck no!

I have been thinking about this standard criticism - one towards which I am normally sympathetic. It strikes me, though, that as a plot device having a stupid foreigner to whom everything has to be explained is probably better than a lot of "as you and I know" dialogue.

I've also thought a bit more about the novel, and a lot of that is about being a foreigner in Uganda, that sense of not really knowing what is going on in the place. The film had that a bit. I reckon you would have lost that if the main character had been, say, a Ugandan hotellier or something. But maybe that is something you would want to lose.

Nighy is still there, I believe.

I was amused by the implication that McAvoy's unthinking nationalism and Scottish chippiness manifests itself as an anti-English and unthinking pro-Independence stance which leads him to massive political and moral miscalculations. Clearly the subtext of the film is that an independent Scotland would be as morally dubious as the Amin regime.
-- alext (alext), Monday, 22 January 2007 10:56 (8 months ago) Link

the first sentence is correct, the last sentence is wrong. mcavoy is naive but at the same time right that the english are conniving bastards. it is still a miscalculation on his part. but does that suggest an independent scotland would be "as morally dubious as the amin regime", ie murdering hundreds of thousands of people? not really.

thought it was an okay with an obviously terrific performance from FW, but the transition to thriller (gets kay pregnant + enlisted to assassinate amin -- bit much) was kind of weak. the final bits of him getting tortured, then let down, then rescued, were really bad. they should have just had him posing as an israeli and freed by the commandos, if they wanted a climax like that.

and while this was standard fare (i guess) at the same time mcavoy didn't really learn anything. he didn't earn his freedom and remained a callow young idiot. even though entebbe was what? '76? five years after he arrived there.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2215791,00.html

blimey