Africa in The Last King of Scotland

May 30, 2007

I enjoyed The Last King of Scotland (2006).. and I will join the chorus of praise for Forest Whitaker's portrayal of the dictator Idi Amin. In the past few years we have been awash in what might be called "international serious drama". These films tend to be set in Africa or the Middle East.. two regions evidently with box office appeal. Most of the action in The Constant Gardener and Blood Diamonds was in Africa.. but neither film was as convincing in terms of the view of Africa.

This photo above is a quickly passing interior scene in which you can glimpse the usual photos of the great leader hanging in the tailor shop. Up on the balcony are a couple of African workers handling some of the grunt work.

The tailor shop is run by Indian merchants.. who we are shown briefly. These men will appear once more toward the end when Amin expels all foreigners. A scene like this helps to build up a mental image of social complexity in Africa.. something that filmmakers do not always rush to embrace. You get more popular kudos for evoking Africa as the poor Africa of the popular imagination.

This scene reminded me of A Bend in the River (1979) by V.S. Naipaul. The novel takes place in an unnamed African city, but the situation is parallel to the way things got out of control in Uganda under Idi Amin (who ruled from 1971 to 1979). The narrator is a young Indian merchant who arrived in an interior city from the coast. The reader is allowed to watch as the country prospers and then falls apart under an African populist leader. The novel is more complex than The Last King of Scotland because of the willingness to describe the world from a non-western viewpoint and to break down for us the social world of an African city. I would go so far as to say that knowledge of Naipaul's novel makes The Last King of Scotland feel like the shadow of a richer experience.

Why is The Last King of Scotland diminished next to a novel by Naipaul? The above scene gives a clue. We need a handsome young Scot (James McAvoy) to serve as our normative lens for events in Africa. The main events of the film (and the novel by the same name on which it was based) are based on historical events.. but the central piece of fiction is the addition of this young man who becomes a trusted advisor to Amin. He naturally gets involved with one of the beautiful wives of Amin (a bad idea). Naipaul's young Indian merchant, on the other hand, is a stranger to us. An out of place person without any real home.. and who toward the end we find in London trying to make sense of his identity and how to fit into the modern world. Perhaps those are not the struggles of the ticket buying public? That is a devastating limitation for Hollywood.