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Last Updated: May 30th, 2008 - 11:49:13 |
Idi Amin, the brutal Ugandan leader who rose to power in 1971 with assistance from the West and then murdered 300,000 of his own people, was, by all definitions a monster.
So does it matter who is calling him a monster?
This is the unsettling and unsettled question for me after screening “The Last King of Scotland,” which washes over the viewer like a tsunami of political turbulence, violence and murderous madness. Featuring a hypnotic performance by Forest Whitaker and directed by documentary filmmaker Kevin McDonald, it is based on the award-winning novel by Giles Foden, who moved from England to Uganda when he was five and lived there for some years. The novel and film are fictional accounts of a young doctor, fresh out of medical school, who goes to Uganda to work at a mission but winds up as Amin’s personal physician and one of his “closest advisors.”
That’s all good. I’m not trying to hate on anybody’s great novel. But I prefer my history, no matter how powerfully rendered in literature or film, based on facts, not fiction. I especially need facts when the subject matter is as complicated as colonial and post-colonial Africa, the interpersonal lives and habits of African women and the roles and attitudes of both European colonizers and the African colonized.
The story, told through the eyes of the young doctor, does, rightfully, paint a picture of him as naive and of British complicity in Amin’s rise to power. But then it goes on, based on who knows what, to picture African women as easy and available sexual partners to the young doctor. One woman who he meets on the bus, before the movie has even really started, winds up riding him like she’s at a rodeo. Another fictional storyline has one of Amin’s shunned wives taking up with him, despite the obvious risks. If it were true, that would be one thing, but it’s not. As it is, what looks deceptively like history writ large on the big screen turns out to be, partly, some White boy’s wet dream.
Whitaker, who is so deserving of recognition, is already getting awards buzz for his tour de force performance. Remembering, however, the storm over “historical inaccuracy” that swirled around Denzel Washington’s nomination for the film, “The Hurricane,” based on the life of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, I wonder how in the world “The Last King of Scotland” can stand the same test.
Of course at the core of the Black film movement of the past 20 years has been the drive for Black people to tell our own stories. This drive is what sets apart films like “Malcolm X,” “Antwone Fisher” and “Hotel Rwanda” from movies, even if they have merit, such as “Cry Freedom,” “Mississippi Burning” or “Monster’s Ball.”
This whole voice thing and vision thing is truly going in the wrong direction if an important opportunity to tell real history—even about our monsters— is instead told through someone else’s fiction.
Esther Iverem is founder of www.SeeingBlack.com and author of a forthcoming book on Black film.
© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com
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