Uday Hussein: Iraq's "Devil"
The "queen" of true crime novels, Ann Rule, once described the hopeless psychopath, or "lust killer", as someone who feels that "there are no other real people in his world. Only him. Other people exist only to fulfill--or deny--his needs."
She might as well have been describing Uday Saddam Hussein, the titular "Devil" in Director Lee Tamahori's (Die Another Day) Sundance-acclaimed film, The Devil's Double.
The film stars Dominic Cooper (An Education, Mamma Mia!) in a breakout dual role, as the exuberantly demonic Uday and his forcibly-adopted "fiday" (body double), Latif Yahia. It is adapted by Michael Thomas from Yahia's own memoir.
Set from 1987 to 1992, we first meet Latif as a young Iraqi officer who once attended academy with Saddam's party-boy son Uday, and has the life-altering misfortune of bearing more than a passing resemblance to him. As the Iran/Iraq war comes to a head (followed swiftly by Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm) Uday makes Latif an offer he can't refuse. When Latif initially balks, he is summarily taken to a torture chamber and worked over. Then for good measure, the head hit man tells Latif that if he doesn't agree, Latif's entire immediate family will be on the receiving end of a machine gun or sent to Abu Ghraib.
"You are asking me to extinguish myself!" Latif stoically cries in a last gesture of resistance.
That's exactly what Uday was asking--or really, telling. Uday's no-nonsense butler expands upon it. The ministry of propaganda will tell Latif's family that he died a "martyr" on the battlefield so that they will no longer worry about him. From now on, Latif Yahia would no longer exist--and it would be best for Latif if he accepted that as true. As we watch Latif try to adapt to his new surroundings, Cooper never lets us forget we are watching a decent man being forced to commit spiritual suicide.
Perhaps Latif will find some consolation in the new 24-7 party lifestyle and the Croesus-like luxury that he now has an all-access pass to. The Presidential palaces, with their armadas of Mercedes and Rolls-Royces and Porsches and Lamborghinis, their resort-like swimming pools and Roman columns, the limitless gourmet food and walk-in closets overflowing with Versace and Hugo Boss and Rolexes, make the starkest possible contrast with the barren suffering and privation of the Iraqi desert hovels and suburban slums everywhere else that Latif is used to.
After a while, there are times when Latif allows himself to be "adjusting" to his job, impersonating and taking on Uday's speech and affect and tics, but (much to Uday's amusement and frustration), Latif never willingly takes part in the S&M and the torture that are Uday's sexiest thrills in life. Uday is exuberant, almost childlike in his sadism, an infantile-narcissist Scarface; other human beings are simply the toys in his playpen to bang and throw around at will. He demands instant gratification, always on the lookout for more coke, more booze, and above all, more "c*nt". Latif is every inch the taciturn, quiet, honorable man trying to hold onto what little shards of himself he can amidst surreal horrors. And every time he starts to get used to his surroundings, there's something that snaps him back--like seeing Uday's collection of real-life "torture porn" (including electrified wire beds, teeth removed with bolt cutters, disembowelments--although for those with weaker stomachs, the film doesn't dwell on these things like a slasher film; it is generally tasteful until the end, while still being relatively true to Uday's real-life passions.) Uday was also notorious for picking up schoolgirls as young as 12 and 14 years old (by forcible kidnapping right off the streets), to be used and thrown away like a Kleenex tissue.
Raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl is a hard standard to beat in terms of offensiveness, but Uday perhaps equals even that in the film when he attends a wedding of an Iraqi army officer, and wonders aloud to his "fiday" if he could "f*** that" as he drools over the just-married bride. He immediately answers his own question by having the young woman brought over to him (in front of her husband and family, powerless to protect her or stop him, and all of them know it.) The next scene shows her in bed--still in her white vestal virgin's wedding gown -- now torn and bloody after Uday finished an hour of brutally beating and sodomizing her. In shock and unutterable humiliation, she throws herself off the hotel balcony to her death, in front of her traumatized family below.
It is important to note that not all of these scenes are literally true; some are composites and condensations of what allegedly happened in Saddam-era high society. The movie "is only 20% of the truth", the real-life Latif said in an interview with London's Mirror. "We didn't want to make a horror movie", and the real Uday's crimes were perhaps just too unrelenting to be given full cinematic treatment (Latif recalled that it was not unusual for him to watch Uday torture people for "seven, eight hours a day", and rape and murder pregnant women, for instance).
The film's most inexcusable and over-the-top departure is a tacked-on climax scene which makes it appear that Latif took direct part in the assassination attempt that crippled Uday Hussein in late 1996 (Uday was later killed, of course, by American forces during the 2003 Iraq invasion.) In real life, Latif was spirited out of the country by the CIA to Vienna in March 1992. One can perhaps forgive this as a revenge fantasy or dream, but the movie didn't need to end on a note of forced-hype Rambo theatrics, especially when purporting to be a true story. (Director Lee Tamahori, went on record in the British press that The Devil’s Double was “not history… not a biopic”.)
So that leaves us to evaluate it's dramatic values and as entertainment, if "entertainment" is the right word for a picture such as this. In both movies and TV, perhaps the surest way to an Oscar or Emmy (or at least a nomination) is to play a dual role or to play against gender, and Dominic Cooper certainly earns his chops in this Jekyll-and-Hyde showcase. The other mostly Middle Eastern actors are serviceable to very good, and Ludivine Sagnier makes the most of her role as a sexy, sly, and deceptive queen bee girlfriend in Uday's modern-day harem, But this is essentially a one-man (in two roles) show.
And while there can be no sympathy for someone who commits the Mengele-like atrocities that Uday Hussein did, at least the film and Cooper's performance, while never making the mistake of "humanizing" Uday, lets us see that in a sense, he is victim as well as victimizer. Just as there is no other path open to Latif but to submit to the devil Uday, is there any other predictable outcome but insanity if your father is a monster like Saddam Hussein? (Although Uday's real brother Qusay, miraculously, seemed to at least have less interest in cruelty for cruelty's sake; he is portrayed as more the "business brains" of things, rather than Narcissus reincarnate.)
Ultimately, for all its many departures from "just the facts", there is no doubt that Uday Hussein was a barbaric butcher. And while nowhere near as good or gripping as Bruno Ganz' definitive last-days-of-Hitler movie Downfall, this film allows those of us who are privileged never to have lived under the iron hand of dictatorship to see its inner workings from the point of view of someone who didn't "drink the Kool-Aid", who did not embrace the evil.
It also underlines how in a police state, the citizens exist only as prizes and props for the use and convenience of the dictator and his inner circle. Outside of Kim Jong-Il's North Korea, perhaps no other country on Earth was this more true of than Saddam Hussein's Iraq, home of such eye-rolling landmarks as "Saddam International Airport", "Saddam University", "Saddam General Hospital", and of course, the Stalin-Hitler-Mao type 40-foot paintings and murals of the Great Leader. I remember news reports at the time of the 2003 invasion that revealed even bricks and mortar for new construction were stamped with "Made in the Era of Saddam Hussein".
Of course, any in-depth discussion of this movie is also sure to re-ignite the uber-controversy surrounding our motives for the 2003-present Iraq War and occupation. The Devil's Double also makes a good "double" feature with the new movie The Whistleblower, which stars Oscar-winner and ultimate "Bond girl" (Mrs. Daniel Craig) Rachel Weisz as United Nations peacekeeper Kathy Bolkovac, who discovers a human-trafficking ring in Bosnia/Herzegovena circa 1999, and the ensuing suppression. Both films have their flaws, but are grounded in strong performances, and above all serve as food for thought--if you can digest them in the first place.
