I recently watched Orson Welles "Citizen Kane". And then it came to me: Barbet Schroeder's "autoportrait" - albeit a documentary about a real tyrant, and one of the bloodiest ever at that is in important parts designed directly after the great masterwork of the 1940s. The impression of watching something staged that is apparently real, that's what is so fascinating about this movie.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD
It starts with a terrific close up of the portraited: Idi Amin Dada does not whisper "Rosebud". He just breathes heavily, shifting his eyes attentively from left to right and back it's just as enigmatic. His Xanadu is a Wildlife Park with crocodiles, elephants and exotic birds, a rooftop swimming pool and rolling grassland, where he enacts the destruction of Israel - tanks, jet planes, helicopters and walky-talkies included. In short: The movie shows us Uganda as a boy's dream.
There are no banquets with ice figurines, but there is a "non confidential" cabinet meeting, with rows of identical attaché cases neatly aligned on the long conference table. (You wonder: Were there really no props, no directions at all from the film crew?) There are no showgirls to fête Idi Amin, but the tyrant joins a traditional dance at a formal dinner party, stomping around and wielding a spear with apparent glee. There is no failed opera singer that has to be applauded into success, instead Idi Amin claps at a crocodile after having asked the film crew "shall I make it move"? The crocodile does not or cannot comply with Amin's orders - no one knows what happened to it afterwards.
Like in Citizen Kane, dreams are forced to become true. In fact, they overtake reality with all the horrible consequences this entails. Both movies are about characters with undeniable charisma who are powerful but for ever immature. One of them is fictional, the other is not. This does not really matter, it actually proves that certain behavior patterns are timeless and universal. They should be guarded closely in the presently globalized world.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD
It starts with a terrific close up of the portraited: Idi Amin Dada does not whisper "Rosebud". He just breathes heavily, shifting his eyes attentively from left to right and back it's just as enigmatic. His Xanadu is a Wildlife Park with crocodiles, elephants and exotic birds, a rooftop swimming pool and rolling grassland, where he enacts the destruction of Israel - tanks, jet planes, helicopters and walky-talkies included. In short: The movie shows us Uganda as a boy's dream.
There are no banquets with ice figurines, but there is a "non confidential" cabinet meeting, with rows of identical attaché cases neatly aligned on the long conference table. (You wonder: Were there really no props, no directions at all from the film crew?) There are no showgirls to fête Idi Amin, but the tyrant joins a traditional dance at a formal dinner party, stomping around and wielding a spear with apparent glee. There is no failed opera singer that has to be applauded into success, instead Idi Amin claps at a crocodile after having asked the film crew "shall I make it move"? The crocodile does not or cannot comply with Amin's orders - no one knows what happened to it afterwards.
Like in Citizen Kane, dreams are forced to become true. In fact, they overtake reality with all the horrible consequences this entails. Both movies are about characters with undeniable charisma who are powerful but for ever immature. One of them is fictional, the other is not. This does not really matter, it actually proves that certain behavior patterns are timeless and universal. They should be guarded closely in the presently globalized world.