Hi to everybody...saw two films last night as different as chalk and cheese, but both were very entertaining in their own way.
The first was 'My House in Umbria' with Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall and Ronnie Barker...it was a gentle, tender film about the aftermath of a bomb going off in a train in Italy. Maggie Smith was a passenger in a full apartment with Ronnie Barker and his daughter, a young German man and his girlfriend and an American husband and wife with their young daughter of around nine or ten. The bomb explodes leaving only Maggie Smith, playing Emily, Ronnie Barker,the General, the young German man, Werner, and the young girl, Amy, alive...
They are all injured but Amy has stopped talking with the shock. Maggie Smith has a house in Umbria and invites them all back to convalesce including Amy, while any living relatives in the USA were traced. During all this, an Italian detective pops up every now and then to question all of them about the tragic events.
After they have settled in and have got to know and feel real affection for each other, an uncle is discovered in the USA of Amy's and arrives to take her back with him...he's cold and academic and nobody warms to him and he despises them. I'll not spoil the outcome, just to say that it was a beautifully acted film with magnificent scenery and a great deal of humour and pathos. Slow, but well paced, and I can recommend it.
The second was much more grim...'The Last King of Scotland' about the rise and fall of Idi Amin of Uganda and his relationship with a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who arrives in Uganda seeking adventure and intending to try to help the people out there. The story starts off entirely from the perspective of the young, and as it turns out, completely naive, newly qualified doctor. Idi Amin meets him and, eventually, invites him to be his personal physician because he likes Scotland and the Scottish people...their relationship begins with Garrigan reluctantly accepting the position and somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of trust that Amin puts in him and that he seeks his advice in all sorts of matters. Gradually though, the relationships begins to be oppressive as Amin's sanity deteriorates and the situation in Uganda becomes one of a bloodbath as Amin orders the removal of all who oppose or threaten him. Garrigan falls in love with Amin's third wife, and gets her pregnant, and from then on, he is intent on getting away from Amin, but hasn't counted on the barbarity of the man with dreadful results.
Although I've written a fair bit about the plot, this is still only a small part of the whole film. The acting by Forrest Whittaker as Idi Amin is excellent and James McAvoy is also very good as Garrigan, but I could not warm to him because his naivety and sheer stupidity at times was breathtaking. In the end, I felt he did a great deal of harm because of it and people ended up dead. That, he would have to live with for the rest of his life. He did, however, go on to write the story of his life with Amin, and this is the basis of 'The Last King of Scotland'. For an insight into a terrible period of Uganda's history, I can highly recommend this film but it's not an easy film to watch in parts because so horrific, and even that was tempered because the reality would never have got past the censors...
That's it, big hugs to one and all..