You may have noticed the lack of movie reviews for a while. That's because the latest movie I got to watch through Netflix was Hotel Rwanda. It came in the mail about a week before we went on vacation, and I just was never able to get into the proper frame of mind to watch it. I knew a bit of what it was going to be about after having seen clips of the movie from when the show was first released in theaters. And because I knew the subject matter I also knew it wasn't something I wanted to watch, but at the same time felt I needed to watch. The movie deals with the Genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994. Extremists in one ethnic group (the Hutu) were responsible for wiping out nearly 75% of another ethnic group (the Tusti). Depending on whose statistics you read over the course of three months somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million Tsuti were brutally slaughtered. And the film makes it painfully clear that this is indeed a slaughter.
That this can occur in this day and age is extremely troubling. I don't claim to know all the politics of the situation, and I'm not sure I want to, but the fact that people somewhere can justify allowing this type of thing to occur is beyond simply belief.
The story follows Paul Rusesabagina (a moderate Hutu), who is the manager of a four star hotel. His wife and family however are Tsuti. The movie makes it clear that not all Hutu are responsible for the killings, since some of the more moderate Hutu who try and quell the violence end up suffering the same fate. The movie deals with Paul's struggle to protect his wife and family as the situation around his increasingly degrades. Along the way his compassion for others causes him to shelter more than 1000 refugees seeking to escape the genocide in the hotel (both moderate Hutu and Tsuti), which because the hotel is foreign owned seems to escape the worst of the atrocities (at least initially).
The movie is particularly powerful and brutal in that all the average citizens feel confident that once the world hears of what is going on that help will be sent. Which makes it all the more crushing when the UN does show up, but not to help, but rather to evacuate all the foreigners (whites) in the country to safety.
It's hard to even write a synopsis of this movie, since I'm sure I'm not doing it justice. I hate to even suggest this, but I suspect that some situations and scenes were overly exaggerated in order to make for a more dramatic movie. But even if only 5% of what Paul has to go through in movie is true, that's 5% more than any person should be required to handle.
It's hard to judge this as a movie and not consider it more of a documentary, so I won't judge it in that sense. The only complaint I had was that the version of the movie I had did not have subtitles available, and there were some scenes where the accents being used make it difficult to understand exactly what is being said (even if you can't always understand what's being said, the intent is usually readily apparent).
I will say this is not a feel good movie. You won't be cheering once it's done regardless of whether Paul and his family manage to escape the bloodshed. But rather the fact that these atrocities were committed at all weighs on you well after the movie is over.
3 comments:
And its all going on again right now in the Darfur region of Sudan. So much for lessons learned.
Also Don Cheadle was amazing in that movie.
As to the Daily Show being off air... I wonder if that affected the timing of Gonzales's announcement? Seriously, with the two week hiatus, maybe they figured now was a good time for him to go, so they won't be mocked on the show.
while i agree this is a powerful movie about an horrific event, i urge you to watch shooting dogs, its a lot harder to watch. probably because it was actually made (and acted) by actual survivors of these atrocities.
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