Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Born in Teheran in 1941 of German parents, Barbet Schroeder is a very cosmopolitan (and polyglot) director. He has made movies in many different locales (including Hollywood) (Reversal of Fortunes, Barfly Single White Female), Medellín (Our Lady of the Assassins), New Guinea (Valley Obscured by Clouds), France (Maîtresse)... and Uganda (General Idi Amin Dada). Although he has also produced many films directed by Eric Rohmer, Schroeder does not make movies about humdrum, everyday European (or American) lives.

Having just seen the vituperative megalomaniac Timothy Treadwell in Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," the foaming-at-the-mouth Klaus Kinski in Herzog's "My Best Friend, Klaus Kinski," the nefarious advisor whom W calls "Turdblossom" and others call "Bush's Brain," and the picture of poor Adolf Hitler at the end of his tether and life (a caring, considerate boss to his secretaries and cook, doting on his dog, and Eva Braun) in "Downfall," I thought that I was ready to watch Schroeder's 1974 documentary about Idi Amin, which has the subtitle "A Self-Portrait." (The film's music is also credited to the dictator, who plays the accordion in one scene.)

In long runs in Paris and London (while American distributors were afraid to take it on), audiences are said to have laughed as much as at what are intended to be comedies. There are some scenes that I thought were funny (the general mugging for the camera with a spear in a sort of tribal warrior conga line in a night club, the rapt concentration of his cabinet as they took notes on his platitudinous ramblings about the necessity of ensuring that the people love their leaders (particularly the paramount one), the practice (war-game) for taking the Golan Heights), but none that were laugh-out-loud. Amin himself chuckled and beamed a lot, and had a disconcerting charm as he uttered bilge. Although buffoonish, he had some charisma and was not tripped up by the English language (I think his third language) as much as the current (sometimes) inhabitant of the White House is. (Amin did have problems with what are mass nouns that is common to those not native speakers of English.)

In a thoughtful and informative interview that is a bonus feature on the Criterion release, Schroeder says that the movie would be boring to anyone who lived in Uganda during the 1970s, because Amin was on television there every day speaking and behaving as he does for Schroeder's camera (operated by Néstor Almendros, a refugee from Cuba, who went on to shoot most of François Truffaut's later films, most notably "The Wild Child," and won an Oscar for the gorgeous images in "Days of Heaven," directed by Terrence Malick). Amin was not ambushed, though Schroeter says that Amin had an innocence that failed to anticipate that he would be laughed at—though he frequently seemed to be laughing along, even laughing at himself. And major vanity! Among other psychopathologies, Amin was a megalomaniac.

Idi Amin, whose official title was "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular." was more gregarious and fun-loving than Hitler or Stalin. Yet his misrule did grave damage to the economy of the resource-rich country (which had been a prosperous British colony before independence in 1962), and besides seizing the assets of Asians and Jews and expelling them from the country, his rule for less than a decade included the execution or disappearance of half a million Ugandans (out of a population of 10 million).

The DVD has a timeline on Ugandan history that includes information on what it would be very difficult not to construe as "crimes against humanity." After his ouster, Idi Amin settled under the protection of the Bush family's good friends (and enrichers) the House of Saud, without any pressure form the Reagan-Bush administration to ship him to the Hague to stand trial.

Although mostly showing Idi Amin going around the country (pointing out crocodiles below near Murchison Falls, inspecting troops and fighter planes, leading the mock assault on the Golan Heights, making speeches, including the exhorations to his cabinet and one to the senior physicians of the country), there is also footage of some executions. (Does this make it a "snuff film"?) It's not all charm and sycophancy. (I'd like to see what the ministers found to write down from what he said!). It is also noted that Uganda under Amin quickly had the highest rate of inflation in Africa. There seems to have been no shortage of arms (Soviet ones supplied, it seems, by Libya, which is where Amini fled in 1979 before settling in Saudi Arabia for the rest of his life (which ended in 2003).

Voice-over narration also notes that the corpse of the Foreign Minister whom Amin criticized in the filmed cabinet meeting was food for the crocodiles in the Nile within two weeks, and points out the fraudulence of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," so the criticism (made at the time, while Amin was still in power) that the film lets Amin's bombast pass for fact is unjust. The movie would be (even more) tedious if every absurdity Amin utters was corrected.

Schroeter is still fascinated by the charming psychotic and says it is the one film he has made that he never tires of watching. I tired of watching Amin in the hour and a half of the movie. I don't know if there is an explanation for his pathologies, but Schroeter's documentary just shows him charming and cajoling. Amin was a literal "big man"—both vertically and horizontally... and had sired 18 children by 1974 and remarkably self-confident.

The general was shocked to learn that foreign audiences were laughing at the movie, had agents transcribe the full movie (he had only seen a one-hour version that was in a series on portraits of world leaders). He demanded that two minutes and 1 seconds be cut. Schroeter refused. Amin had all the French citizens who were in Uganda (roughly 150, including children) rounded up and placed in a hotel from which the army barred any departures and gave Schroeter's Paris phone number to them. The cuts were made, though what was cut was widely reported and what was shown noted "the following ___ was cut on orders of Gen. Amin."

The colors of the DVD print are vivid, the sound erratic (very loud gunfire, some muffled speech), the retrospect of Schroeter is very interesting. The Criterion treatment underlies my rating of 4 stars. The movie itself I find unsatisfying. How someone who was responsible for so much pain and suffering (evil) could come across as charming is unsettling. It is the paradox that interested Schroeter, but the documentary fails to resolve it or even advance understanding of it. A peril of "show, don't tell"?




Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD