On my continued quest to not get dumb after school, I am still watching educational movies...mostly at 3am when I cannot sleep. This week's movies were The Last King of Scotland and A Passage To India.

In The Last King of Scotland, Forest Whittaker plays Ugandan President-turned dictator- Idi Amin. James McAvoy is the main character, playing Amin's doctor(a fictional role). If I may insert a disclaimer here, apparently this film was made after a book, written by a British author, which would totally ruin my stance on "Read before Watching" but I was totally unaware of this. Mea Culpa!!!

Basically, I already had some background on Amin's very oppressive and bloody rule. It is estimated that he killed some 200,000 Ugandans. His ties to the PLO were also well portrayed in the film when the 1976 flight from Athens was hijacked by the PLO and the occupants were taken to Uganda before negotiations secured the release of most of the occupants (Israeli troops came in and got the rest(this was not showin in the film)-Israeli citizens were the only ones not released by Amin) in exchange for the release of jailed PLO members.

I thought the movie was really good. I saw the human side of Amin and could-to an extent- understand his growing paranoia. I would def reccomend this film!! Oh, the reference to Scotland is basically Amin's deep respect for the Scottish who fought against the British (Uganda had also been under British imperial rule).


At least I read the book to the second movie I watched: A Passage To India. It was slightly different than the movie, but E.M. Forster's book was by far much better. I would highly reccomend it!! The movie was pretty good though. The basic plot line(of the movie) is India circa 1920's, during British Imperialist rule. A young English woman and her future mother-in-law travel to India to visit her fiance', who is the chief magistrate in the area. The women are aghast at how the British treat the Indian people and wish to see the "real" India. They meet and befriend a well-educated Indian doctor. During an outing the English woman accuses the Indian doctor of rapping her and the whole area is turned upside down during the trial. The woman recants her testimony but she completely ruins the way the Indian doctor sees the world. He rejects the Western ways that he so admired and wished to be a part of before, and goes back to tradional Muslim garb and outlook.

All in all, it is an amazing story(book or film tho I def preferred the book) and really shows the brutality of British Imperialism and the twisted way of thinking at that time-very similar to Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Achebe's Things Fall Apart in that I find all three of these books have very sad undertones (I have to re-read Conrad b/c i've realized how much I missed out of when I read books in h.s. and was not yet ready to appreciate them fully).

My new saying that I've picked up from Jon Stewart applies well to my thoughts on many of the characters in these kinds of films/books: " Wow-Be a Fucking Person."