Join Ian & Liam for our 345th episode as we head to 1970s Uganda for Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland (2006), a film that puts us terrifyingly close to Idi Amin through the eyes of a fictional young Scottish doctor who discovers that getting into the dictator’s inner circle is considerably easier than getting back out. Megs isn’t with us this week — Amin has appointed her Minister of Something He Just Invented and she's sensibly keeping her head down. Kev? He mentioned that he disagreed with the President once and, well... nobody seems entirely sure where Kev is now.
This week we discuss:
Forest Whitaker’s extraordinary, Oscar-winning Idi Amin — charming, funny, frightening and capable of changing the temperature of a room in seconds. Is this one of the great performances of the 21st century?
James McAvoy’s Nicholas Garrigan — naïve, arrogant, selfish and frequently infuriating. How important is it that the fictional character through whom we experience this story isn't particularly likeable?
Fact versus fiction — Garrigan never existed, but Amin certainly did. Does inserting a fictional white protagonist give audiences an effective route into Ugandan history, or unnecessarily place him at the centre of somebody else's tragedy?
Ian breaks down the film's construction of Amin — how does the film make us understand his charisma without ever asking us to excuse what lies beneath it?
Liam explores the seduction of proximity to power — Garrigan sees the warning signs remarkably early, so why does he keep finding reasons to stay?
How much did we actually know about Idi Amin and Uganda before watching the film? We explore the history behind the story and how closely the broad trajectory of Amin's dictatorship matches what we're shown.
The tonal transformation — the first act occasionally feels like an exciting adventure for a young doctor abroad. How effectively does the film tighten the screws until that same world becomes absolutely terrifying?
Amin the man versus Amin the monster — are the moments of humour, insecurity, paranoia and apparent warmth what make Whitaker's portrayal so frightening?
Garrigan's decisions — there's being naïve, there's making mistakes, and then there's Nicholas Garrigan. At what point did we stop sympathising with him and start shouting at the screen?
The women in Garrigan's story — does the film recognise the consequences of his behaviour toward them, or are they too often used to propel his journey?
The violence — much of the film holds back before suddenly refusing to do so. Does that restraint make the moments when Macdonald finally shows us the horror even more effective?
The final act — The Last King of Scotland eventually becomes almost unbearably tense. Does turning historical atrocity into thriller mechanics enhance the film's impact or risk trivialising the reality behind it?
And finally, whether The Last King of Scotland is the Best Film Ever — or a deeply uncomfortable historical drama elevated by one absolutely towering central performance.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
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