Harris Zaki Rashid

I recently watched The Last King of Scotland and my initial impression was simple: Forest Whitaker could not have done a better job playing Idi Amin. From the accent, the passion of his mood swings, and even to how he was eating the Ugandan food with his hands, Forest evoked the many passions of Idi Amin. You saw the playful side, the caring side, the loving side, the enraged side, the paranoid side, the fatherly side, the possessed side, the disspossed side, the African side, the Scottish side, the dress-up side, the Muslim side, the leader side, the dictatororial side, the murderous side of the man, and the Revolutionary and Liberator side, all through the artistic interpretation of the actor Whitaker

It was even better to watch the interviews and extras to the DVD, just to explore the directors’, the actors’, and the writers’ thought processes in injecting the completely fictional character of Nicholas Carrigan into the factual portrait of Uganda, it’s people, and it’s leader during the horrible events of the 1970’s. I was intially skeptical about such an absurd dichotomy of fiction laid upon reality, and was eager to know the story of Uganda and Amin from a Ugandan perspective. But as the movie played out and two characters’s stories grew intertwined within each other, parts of Amin’s physchology, fears, and aspirations were drawn out in an interesting way. Carrigan’s Scottish ancestry and daring side represented everything Amin wanted to be as a dictator, the liberator of Uganda from the grasp of British domination and colonialism.

All in all, it was a masterful and tasteful portrayal of the characters, the times, and the factual events of the tragic story of Uganda and Amin in the 1970’s.

This entry was posted Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Movies, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.