FILM: Creating a monster

Photo: foto.estevanoriol.com

Huggable. It’s a word that seems to have clung to Forest Whitaker through most of his career. For a serious, somewhat brooding actor, there are worse tags to be saddled with. Even the ferocious football lineman he played as part of 1982’s “class of Ridgemont High”—the extraordinary group of up-and-comers that included Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Phoebe Cates—turns out to be a big, protective grizzly bear, securing concert tix for his stoner younger brother. Whitaker can somehow make a lethal Zen hit man a gentle playmate for a nine-year-old girl (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai), or a drug-abusing jazz genius seem a halfway-decent family man (Bird).

This is all about to change. “I wasn’t looking to, like, make him a nice guy or anything,” says Whitaker, 45, of his role in The Last King of Scotland, due in theaters at the end of the month. “I mean, he is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.” The “he” in question is the barbaric former dictator of Uganda, General Idi Amin. Whitaker’s performance, a total immersion into the tyrant’s mannerisms, psychology and terrifying instincts, is the kind that merits hyperbole—and, quite often, podium speeches.

“Yeah, people have been bringing it up,” Whitaker says warily by phone from his Los Angeles home, doing everything he can to muzzle an Oscar buzz that’s already droning. “I think it can be really bad for you to make that your goal and think that’s going to happen. I mean, my managers, my agents, every one of the press was talking about my performance in [TV’s] The Shield: ‘He’s going to win an award.’ And I wasn’t even nominated!”

Still, his Idi Amin is special. Directed by Kevin Macdonald, best known for his searing documentary One Day in September (about the ill-fated 1972 Munich Olympics), The Last King of Scotland primarily concerns the misadventures of a young Scottish med-school grad, the fictional Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), who, on an escapist whim, travels to Uganda just as Amin is taking power in 1971. Wandering into the rapt crowd at a midday public speech by Amin, Garrigan is stunned by the spell the leader casts, a stranglehold that Whitaker never relinquishes for the remainder of the movie.

“I was amazed at his complexity. Amin had this quality of being able to be passionately in the moment, and then to shift drastically,” Whitaker says. “He wasn’t equipped to be the president. He was a soldier. You know how when a child hurts his knee and he’s crying uncontrollably, and then, suddenly, he’s laughing and playing? I think you can see that quality in Amin. The brutality, the insanity of him, is only a part of understanding who he was.”

To prepare for the role, Whitaker -embarked on a taxing transformation of his own devising: Swahili lessons, accordion lessons, dialect coaches and historical study, especially of Barbet Schroeder’s landmark 1974 documentary, General Idi Amin Dada. “I probably watched it every single day!” Whitaker says. “I could quote you that documentary word-for-word. In fact, there are times in the film where, if it goes into an improv, I speak purely the words of Idi Amin. He was a showman, so there’s lots of footage.”

Whitaker remains audibly moved by his experience of shooting on location in Uganda, his first visit to Africa. “The people there were so beautiful, so generous with their lives,” he recalls. “I didn’t feel like some guy who came on safari, you know? I was embraced in a lot of ways. People gave me their hearts. I started to feel like if I play this character wrong, I’m letting down a whole country, a continent.”

“For a director, that’s the kind of commitment you dream of having!” says Macdonald from London, letting loose an excited laugh. “At first, I couldn’t actually see him in the part, gentle giant that he is. But he came in and read a scene, and he blew me away. He completely convinced me, there and then, that he not only could do it, but he was the perfect person. He had a passion for the part.”

It’s a passion that has translated not just into some of the year’s best acting, but into a timely movie about political naïveté, crafted by Macdonald with a keen eye for ensnaring the audience in its own complicity. “I wanted people to really…like the guy,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “To love being with him. So by the time he turns, and people start realizing what’s going on, the audience feels a little like Nicholas. They feel, I want the other guy back! Oh God, I shouldn’t want that! The guy’s a monster!”

Oh well. Maybe Whitaker won’t lose that huggable after all.

The Last King of Scotland opens September 27.

More in FILM:
Creating a monster | Carmen chameleon | Retro active | Screen grabs