Most Depressing Movie Night Ever
Last night I went to the Mayfair Theatre and watched a double feature of The Last King of Scotland and The Wind That Shakes the Barley. I have never felt worse after leaving a cinema. The only possible moral I can gather from both of those movies is that you should never ever be a doctor from a Celtic nation that had trouble with the English. No good can come of it.
They are both good movies mind you, just back to back were a bit much. A Scottish doctor gets over his head with Idi Amin in Uganda or an Irish doctor gets caught up in the beginnings of the Irish Republican Army. Take your pick to which movie was more bloody depressing.
After last night I want to make sure I’m never given any power whatsoever for as long as I live or to be anywhere near anyone who wants power, has power or thinks power should be redistributed. Thankfully, I’m not a doctor, so at least I won’t be around, or required to, shoot people I know - which if I based all my knowledge on these two movies, is pretty much what doctors do - then meet horrible ends themself.
2 comments:
It is interesting how shock value sells, though. I think people were genuinely entertained by the portrayal of Idi Amin..Forest Whiitaker did an amazing job. But it's too bad that the creators of the script felt the need to insert episodes which were not even historically accurate (like when Idi Amin has his wife killed and then they disfigure the body - that is not alleged to have happened). I heard and read an interview with one of Idi Amin's sons who basically said - "yes, my dad did some nasty things, people fought him and he fought them, but the film is not based on real events" - and he left it at that.
It sort of reminds me of other horrible but manufactured stories, a la the Kuwait invasion when the American media reported about 'Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators'. That was proven to be a fraud. What gets lost in this process is the fact that genuinely terrible or oppressive things happen, in various parts of the world. So, why inflate or invent the violence when the actual, real-life violence is bad enough?
(A possible answer is ..it's a product that viewers will buy.)
I want to see both movies. Sounds like they're rentals now...
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