Old story, great acting

Aurore 2022-04-22 07:01:05

Having nothing to do, I watched "The Last Dictatorship" today. It was downloaded on the hard drive a long time ago and I haven't seen it. Because a friend suggested not to watch movies that make you more depressed when you are depressed. The spring flowers are blooming and the sun is shining today, which is suitable for watching such a heavy movie, hehe.

A Scottish doctor went to Uganda to escape, but by accident, he became Amin's personal doctor and fell into a deeper darkness. The first half seems to be Snow walking to Yan'an, and the second half is as if Guido and his son entered the concentration camp. Although the story is complete, it is not as powerful as "Schindler's List" and "Life is Beautiful." Especially the later affair between the doctor and Amin's woman is simply a piece of shit that Hollywood never tires of. Just as the American continent was a no-man's land before Columbus went, the suffering of black people is the ecological balance of nature before white people see it. It's as if a cat eats a mouse and everyone laughs at it, but if the mouse is your pet, it's different. It's like the United States has a "Declaration of Human Rights" long ago, but it has been arguing about whether black people are human. Although this quarrel is over, such a concept is deeply rooted.

Westerners like to look at the world of people of color from their own perspective, such as "The Last Emperor", "Anna and the King", "Lawrence of Arabia", and "The Last Dictatorship" is no exception. So even though Amin is such a legendary person, the movie made me feel like deja vu. To be honest, I saw Amin's charisma in the movie, but I didn't fully feel the misery in Uganda. Maybe it's not the director's incompetence, but the white world's deep-seated contempt for savage people of color? Even in expressing their suffering, it is out of pity, without the pain of Schindler's List. It feels as if the British are calling for laws against animal cruelty.

Fortunately, Whittaker's performance lit up the entire film, so that the film did not become garbage. Maybe that's the only thing that impresses me about this movie, isn't it?

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Extended Reading
  • Kale 2021-10-26 03:30:44

    There is also entertainment and political criticism, and they are well combined.

  • Jacklyn 2021-10-26 03:30:45

    Whitaker played so well~ Be a friend like a tiger, Goriken doesn’t understand.

The Last King of Scotland quotes

  • Nicholas Garrigan: This is Africa. You meet violence with violence. Anything else, and you're dead.

  • Title Card: Amin died in exile in Saudi Arabia on the 16th of August 2003. Nobody knows if that was the date he had dreamed about.