The Horror! The Horror! My Wages! My Wages!
Directed by Kevin Macdonald (of Touching the Void fame) and written by Mrs. Brown scribe Jeremy Brock, The Last King of Scotland has already picked up several BAFTA nominations and is subject of a whispering Oscar campaign. Win or lose, the buzz surrounding this independent British film is rapidly becoming deafening, and it is easy to see why. Cosmetically a bildungsroman about a naïve young Scottish doctor who seeks out adventure in Uganda only to befriend the notorious tyrant and cannibal Idi Amin, the film shows Nicholas Garrigan being sucked into the dictator's rock star-like lifestyle only for him to realise that his friend has been responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people. However, the realisation comes too late and Garrigan is tortured for his affair with the dictator's wife and his part in a clumsy plot to assassinate the dictator.
Most critics have taken this film very much at face value, preferring instead to focus on Forest Whitaker's admittedly extraordinary performance. In fact, the universality of the praise heaped upon the film has even lead to a miniature backlash as some critics react to the implicit racism of a film nominally about a plucky young white doctor having to flee from the Big Black Savage. However, if one looks beyond the performances and the film's naiveté, one quickly discovers that The Last King of Scotland is actually a far more subtle and substantial piece about racism, the Heart of Darkness and the desire for greatness. In fact, The Last King of Scotland is pretty much a twenty first century version of Apocalypse Now as written by the 17th Century French playwright Moliere.
In an article in the Guardian, Giles Foden (author of the book upon which the film is based) points out that initially; the character of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan was based upon Sganarelle from Moliere's Dom Juan (an echo of the hypocritical and cowardly Tartuffe in the banned play of the same name). Foden shrugs this off by saying that a doctor would be more interesting but in the final relationship between Garrigan and Amin, it is still possible to see the vestiges of the relationship between Don Juan and his cowardly valet.
Like most of Moliere's valets, Sganarelle is called upon to do two jobs. On the one hand, the valet is a foil for the central characters, lightening the tone by injecting humour into what might otherwise be a saccharine love story or, in the case of Dom Juan, a dark and depressing piece about a free-thinking libertine being struck down by God. On the other hand, the valet serves as the audience's intercessor, acting as a link between the audience and the main character; introducing him to us and then asking him the kind of questions that any member of the audience might feel like asking. In most of Moliere's plays (and indeed most plays of the period and type), the valet serves as a voice of reason when faced with the folly and stupidity of his master. However, Sganarelle's role is different.
Sganarelle admits that he stays with the arch-seducer Don Juan more out of cowardice than any moral sense. He is forced to follow him and be complicit in his seductions because Don Juan is a great man, a transgressor of taboos and an endless font of charisma and skill. At one point, Sganarelle even throws up his hands and declares "Ah! What a man! What a man!" Sganarelle is drawn to Don Juan like a moth to the flame because he wishes he were him. He wishes that he was a great man and a transgressor of boundaries and laws but instead he is a cowardly little man. This realisation is what fuels Sganarelle's conflicted nature. On the one hand, the valet admires his master and admits that he has no moral backbone whatsoever, but on the other hand, he is endlessly calling upon his master to repent his sinful ways. Obviously, these calls are half-hearted and unconvincing because Sganarelle's distain for his master's activities is nothing more than distain for his own failure to be a great man.
While this relationship nicely mirrors that of the film, it does not completely account for it. Indeed, unlike Sganarelle, Garrigan is not a passive observer of his master's activities. As Boden puts it, he is more priapic than passive. Indeed, the subtleties of the relationship between Whitaker's Amin and his "White Monkey" are what give this film its meat and its similarities with Apocalypse Now.
Many critics have described Whitaker's Amin as a duality, a jester and a bully. Indeed, this apparent paradox of a brutal and sadistic dictator with a broad and surreal sense of humour is what made Amin such a media icon during the 1970's. From Alan Coren and John Bird's audio recordings (featuring the song "Amazing Man") to his appearance in sketches on Saturday Night Live and a number of other comedy series, Amin was seen by many in the west as a figure of fun, a bloated murderous buffoon who could only ever come to power in some tin pot African country. The Last King of Scotland shows us Idi Amin through the eyes of a westerner and as a result, Garrigan happily falls into the trap of seeing Amin as a simple duality. However, had Amin really been a murderous buffoon then it is unlikely he could have found his way to the top of Uganda's heavily politicised army. In truth, Amin was gifted with a keen social intellect and an ability to work out how best to deal with people. The film acknowledges this complexity when Amin's wife Kaye says, "He has always been like this". This should not be taken to mean that Amin chose not to show the bully to Garrigan (in fact, when Garrigan meets Amin, the dictator is acting paranoid and aggressive), but rather that Amin is Amin and it is foolish to try to boil him down to some simple duality. That is the mistake that Garrigan makes, it is the mistake that the British diplomats make ("he seems to play with a straight bat") and t is the mistake that the film invites us to make.
Indeed, many have criticised the film's simplification of what was a convoluted political situation in which different Cold War factions clashed and tribal politics lead to the death of over 300,000 of Amin's people. In fact, the film does not worry overly about Uganda's internal politics and it only reveals the extent of Amin's debauchery and brutality at the very end of the film. However, I would argue that this simplification is a reflection of Garrigan's role as the audience's intercessor and is intentional on Macdonald's part. By showing us Uganda through the eyes of a naïve and priapic white doctor, Macdonald is challenging our tendency, as a western audience, to racism as well as our ignorance of African history. In this respect, the film serves a very similar purpose to that of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness novella.
The inspiration for Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Conrad's novella tells the story of a journey into Africa where a man named Kurtz has apparently gone insane and revealed himself to the local population as a god and therefore beyond the constraints of everyday morality. Kurtz' last words on dealing with the locals is to "exterminate the brutes!" and he dies uttering the words "The Horror! The Horror!" Much like The Last King of Scotland, The Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, appear as almost racist stories of a white man's journey out of civilisation and into the brutal jungle where human morals and principles cease to mean anything. However, Heart of Darkness actually argues for the moral equivalence of black and white cultures. White Europeans consider themselves to be civilised just as they consider Africans little better than savages but in fact, white "civilisation" is just as prone to violence, brutality and moral decay as anything produced in Africa.
At the start of the party in Kampala where Amin seduces Garrigan, the dictator gives a speech about Uganda being the source of all civilisation and promises that the food is all local produce and that none of it is human flesh. This shows that Amin is well aware of the perceptions of his country and race by the white Europeans, and is happy to play with these perceptions. Garrigan's arrival at the party is akin to an arrival in a different world. After escaping the dull but good life of a family doctor in Scotland and the dull but good life of a doctor in Africa, Garrigan sees the glamour and luxury of the party and is instantly hooked. The scene at the party not only clashes with the dull but worthy moral world of civilised "good" white doctors but also the patronising imagery of Africa that the film begins with. Indeed, just as Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now contain early scenes with indigenous people doing the kind of things indigenous peoples stereotypically do, so does this film for in introducing Africa with such patronising and stereotypical images of Africans sitting on a crowded bus and playing football with no shoes on. These scenes not only remind us of Garrigan's racism but also of his yearning for something more from life. He is not happy being civilised in Scotland. He is not happy being civilised in Uganda. Nicholas Garrigan yearns for the touch of greatness that only Idi Amin can offer him.
Both Amin and Garrigan are hollow men. Garrigan begins the film as a doctor but when confronted with the possibility of a dull but good life as a family doctor the sheer existential dread he feels is enough to make him scream. So, searching for something more he travels to Africa where he encounters another family doctor leading a good but dull life. As he says to the doctor's wife as he tries to seduce her, sometimes being close to a good person can really make you feel like shit. Garrigan is not a good man; he is hollow, he lacks a moral backbone. This is a characteristic that is shared by both Heart of Darkness' Marlow and Apocalypse Now's Willard. This is why all three characters come to be sucked into the world of a great man, a man beyond traditional morality. Amin, Garrigan, Willard, Kurtz and Marlow are all hollow men. They all lack a clear moral backbone, but they are also full as they all have appetites that other men lack. The difference between greatness and mere moral decay is ability and a willingness to embrace those appetites no matter what the cost.
What differentiates Amin from Garrigan is his greatness. Like Hitler, Stalin or Caesar, Amin is what historians call a great man because he can, by act of sheer will, sculpt not only his destiny but also the destiny of millions. What gives Amin his greatness is a willingness to confront the consequences of his actions whatever they might be and no matter how horrific the further consequences might end up being. For Amin, there is no karma; there is only outrage at the idea of a universe that dares to inflict upon him his just deserts. Garrigan is not a great man because he lacks the courage to be one despite desiring it so. Garrigan refuses to see the consequences of his actions and even when those consequences are obvious he is not interested in them ("Fuck it" he says as he foolishly seduces Amin's wife). In fact, the only time he does try to take the initiative and deal with the consequences of his actions, the first plan that comes to mind is to go and beg someone else to help him and put himself in the line of fire in Garrigan's place. Garrigan not only is a great man, he is also like all Europeans who, as Amin points out, only go to Africa to fuck and to take things away.
Amin seems to confirm this in one particularly important scene where Garrigan attempts to plead with Amin not to expel the Asians from Uganda. As he mumbles through some waffle about the economy, Amin becomes increasingly angry before telling him to get out. Later, Amin reproachfully reminds Garrigan that he failed in convincing Amin not to expel the Asians. Amin not only understands Garrigan but he is disappointed with the man he befriended. When Garrigan meets Amin for the first time, he takes the dictator's gun without asking and uses it to shoot a cow dead because its agonised shrieking was distracting him. In that moment, Garrigan shows a willingness to be great and to control his own destiny but this desire fades with time. As a result, Garrigan is reduced to playing the role of Sganarelle; forever uselessly berating his master and telling him to repent without the skill to convince him or the moral fibre to stop serving him.
Much like Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness, The Last King of Scotland is structured to build up to the final confrontation with the film up until that moment serving to highlight the moral decay of the supposedly civilised Europeans. This is because, despite being critiques of western civilisation, these works are primarily works of personal horror. The final confrontation in all three pieces sees the protagonist come face to face with the true heart of darkness. This is nicely illustrated in The Last King of Scotland by the moment where Garrigan arrives at Amin's hospital and descends the stairs from the gleaming world of medical modernity into a dark, twisted and hideous place where savagery is the norm. There he finds Amin's adulterous wife with her arms and legs severed and her arms stitched to her leg sockets. The result is identical to that experienced by Willard when Kurtz presents him with his compatriot's severed head. He breaks.
In the final confrontation, all three characters break. Their desire for greatness takes them into the heart of darkness but their resolve buckles at the last moment. In the case of Conrad's Marlow, this failure manifests itself as lying to Kurtz's fiancée and assuring her that Kurtz's last words were her name and not the ultimate truth of human existence "The Horror! The Horror!" Similarly, Coppola's Willard also buckles when he agrees to kill Kurtz but then justifies it to himself in terms of his morality. As Nietzsche suggests, morality is the mark of the slave, not of the superman. Garrigan's failure is perhaps the most profound of these three as he finds that when confronted with the true face of human existence, all he can do is seek refuge in the morality that he long since turned his back on and the racism that defines him as a European. "You're a child... that's why you're so fucking scary!" he spits at Amin, the ultimate in European condescension that shows Garrigan's failure to understand true greatness even as the end of his own life seemingly looms. Like Sganarelle, Garrigan yearns to be free of morality and the possibility of living a dull but good life, but he never has the courage to free himself from the cowardice that holds him back. Even though Garrigan escapes at the end of the film, it is only because he allows a Ugandan doctor (a good man) to sacrifice himself for him. Just as shooting a cow once paved Garrigan's sacrificial way into the inner circle of Amin, a shot to the head of a good man is the sacrificial cost necessary to get him out. However, because Garrigan is Garrigan, someone else has to do the killing for him.
The closing speech of Moliere's Dom Juan is given by Sganarelle who, after seeing his master struck down by God weeps for his wages and claims that while the offended god, the raped women and the dishonoured families will all be happy, only Sganarelle really loses out because he has lost his employer. With this speech, Sganarelle reveals his weak and petty-minded disposition as well as his failure to grasp the consequences of actions. Don Juan has been struck down and this is supposed to make the women that he has raped feel happy, thereby suggesting that the only person to lose out is poor Sganarelle. Garrigan's final act of selfishness and cowardice and refusal to acknowledge the consequences of his actions not only makes him the heir to Marlow and Willard but also Sganarelle. While a great man would whisper "The Horror! The Horror!" Nicholas Garrigan would only cry out "My Wages! My Wages!"
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