The Last King of Scotland

Saw "The Last King of Scotland" tonight. Yeah, the critics are right, actually. If Forest Whitaker doesn't win the Oscar for this performance, well, I don't know. It will mean the polar bears really are completely doomed. Which I guess they might be anyway. But I digress. According to the IMDB, this movie was released in the states in September? Can that be right? The movie is about a Scotsman for christsake. And it's just been released here. Well. As a staunch lover of films, I so often overlook mediocre or even lousy acting because the other elements of film are good. Even Pan's Labyrinth, which I still say is one of the absolute best films of 2006, had maybe two decent performances. But, as a fairy tale, believable acting is not really a requirement. Most of the characters were more caricatures, archetypes, than sympathetic, believable, multi-dimensional characters. The film in part called for this, and in part was made weaker because of this. There was something that bothered me at the end, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, that kept me from proclaiming, "one of the great masterpieces of filmmaking!" and instead compelled me to admit, "a great film, though not without its flaws."

Ok, "The Last King of Scotland" is one of the great masterpieces of filmmaking. It is wonderful, brilliantly written, brilliantly acted, beautifully shot, well put-together, brutal but not overly-so. Even the lighting was amazing -- I don't know how they consistently lit the lead actor so that his blue eyes appeared to be glowing from the inside-out, despite everything happening to him and around him, but they did. At the end there is some footage of Idi Amin, and, and, and had the performance not been so multi-leveled and multi-faceted, I would say that Forest Whitaker simply pulled off the most brilliant impersonation ever committed to celluloid. Except it wasn't an impersonation, because impersonations are notoriously cardboard. It's more like he was channeling Amin.

The story arch and pacing, also, were perfect. The set-up and the knock-down perfectly executed. Acting, dialogue, story elements that could be easily overplayed were pulled off expertly. I know this "review" is woefully uncritical, so I will say that there was one point when I was brought out of the film's world, when the director (who has previously only directed documentaries, and clearly does his best work when sticking to that format, even when tackling narrative fiction) adopted some cliche filmic techniques in order to illustrate a character getting drunk. If I had to complain, if I was forced at gunpoint to find a weak point, this would be it. It's about 10 seconds, and really only stands out as weak because of the perfection of the rest of the film that surrounds it. In a lesser film, it wouldn't even be noticed.

This is a great film. The folly of youth. The corrupting power of power. Brave, brutal, fucking brilliant. I'd recommend you see it.