This is about this guy who goes to recently independent Uganda to work as a doctor in a rural clinic. As soon as he arrives the country experiences a coup, and the new leader is a charismatic fellow with whose path the doctor unexpectedly crosses. The doctor finds himself becoming the President's personal physician and confidant. He gradually comes to register that the dictator is not merely charismatic – he is also a raving maniac. And so it goes.
I liked this film well enough. It evoked the African setting well, while Forest Whitaker turned in a superb performance as Idi Amin. Amin's cronies look just like photos I have seen of Amin's cronies. The guy who plays the doctor does a good job of playing a twunt in vastly over his depth. And lovely Gillian Anderson is great in a minor role. The film nevertheless has problematic elements. The romance element between the doctor and one of Amin's wives seems so patently incredible and tacked on for form's sake that you would have to wonder why they bothered. Some also felt that the doctor is so venal, stupid, and fatuously self-serving that it is very hard to get worked up when things turn bad for him. Still, I feel that the good aspects of the film outweighed the bad.
Interesting, maybe, to compare the film with the book. From memory, the doctor in the book is less venal but maybe more stupid, in that it takes him much longer to register what a maniac Amin is. They also left out all the stuff about the Israelis (the book mentions how they helped Amin in the early years, eventually turned against him, and then raided his airport to bust out their hostages). And in the book the doctor stays in Uganda right up to the end of Amin's regime. But you know, books and films are different, and the film was already long enough.
One final great thing about the film is that manages to look very 1970s. A lot of this is down to the slightly bleached look of the film stock. I am not sure whether it looks like the actual 1970s or just like representations of them. But it is still great.
2 comments:
This is so not the kind of film that will be played at my multiplex. Shame.
Well it does have Forrest Whitaker in it, and he did win an Oscar for the role, and it does have a happy ending (essentially"Shortly afterwards Idi Amin was overthrown, huzzah. Let us conveniently forget Milton Obote's reign of terror and the war to overthrow him followed by the long dictatorship of Museveni, about whom everyone is still trying to persuade themelves of good things, and all that invading the Congo shite, etc.")
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