In a period of just one hundred days, over 800,000 people were horrifically slaughtered. The genocide that Rwanda experienced in 1994 was one of the worst in recent decades, but nothing that should have been a surprise to the world; the two ethnic groups – the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis – have had tension ever since Britain colonial times. What is surprising is that 90% of the entire Tutsi population was brutally murdered while the world stood by and did nothing to stop it. “Hotel Rwanda” does a phenomenal job of portraying this true story from the perspective of one man who tried, and did make a courageous difference amidst a hopeless and terrifying reality.
The movie begins with the eerie sound of a radio playing with a black screen, which somberly foreshadows the events that will unfold in the movie. The movie picks up as the Hutu President of Rwanda is going to sign a peace agreement with the Tutsi rebel movement, but is murdered. Hutu extremists blame the President’s death on the “Tutsi cockroaches” and use it as a motive to begin the all out violent slaughter of the people. Here the movie starts to follow the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a manager of a European resort in the capital city Kigali. Rusesabagina himself is a Hutu, but his wife, Tatiana and children are Tutsi. Because of this – and because Rusesabagina’s character seems very sensible – he does not follow most of the other Hutus into the extremist Interahamwe militia to kill off all Tutsis. Throughout the movie, Rusesabagina uses his European business connections and favors to powerful and wealthy Hutus to escape his own death and also saves his family and makes the resort a safe-shelter for 1,268 Tutsi refugees.
One of the first things I noticed about this movie is that despite its violent topic, it keeps the graphic and gory images to a bare minimum. I really liked this because I think that sometimes in our pop culture we show graphic and disturbing images to the point that we are desensitized to it. Director Terry George makes an excellent choice not to show excessive amounts of dead bodies because when they are shown, it makes it that much more significant. They do this by not showing close ups, or only briefly showing the dead corpses. Throughout the movie there are four or five points at which I thought, “are they going to die? What’s going to happen?” The fact that the film never settles into a comfortable or predictable place kept my full attention, when I often find in other movies that I get distracted or bored with the predictability of the plot. Also noteworthy are the acting jobs of the the main characters, played by Don Cheadle (who plays Paul Rusesabagina) and Sophie Okonedo (who plays his wife Tatiana). Both Cheadle and Okonedo play their parts so well that I didn’t even think of them as actors, but as the characters. Cheadle and Okonedo embody and express the desperation and despair that I can imagine Rusesabagina felt during the actual time. I enjoy this movie so much because it isn’t just mindless entertainment. When I watched the film, I felt like it was something that was worth my time to watch because of the real meaning and value of this tragedy. It shows just how easily people will follow the norms of society and fall into peer pressure.
Although “Hotel Rwanda” does a number of things well, it does have its fallbacks too. The movie isn’t westernized as some, but it still has elements like foreshadowing thunderstorms, lights randomly going out and a torrential downpour before a sadder scene. Historically the movie isn’t completely accurate at times; the movie blatantly states that the reason that the United Nations left Rwanda and that western nations didn’t intervene was because they were racist against blacks. This isn’t true, because during the early 90’s the head of the UN’s peacekeeping organization was a black man from Ghana. The film also fails to explain a critical reason why and how the genocide occurred in Rwanda. During the three months that the mass murdering occurred, the international media was focused on South Africa’s Nelson Mandela leading the nation’s first all race elections. Since all the focus was on South Africa, the Hutus realized their opportunity to try to kill all the Tutsis without the international community noticing. It also leaves out how the genocide was able to take place to the extent it did; Rwanda was a gun free zone, which meant that the Tutsi victims had little to no means of fighting back against the murders – which is also why most didn’t try to run or fight back against the Hutu extremists.
Despite “Hotel Rwanda’s” historical inaccuracies and the inevitable modernization of the true story, this movie is more than worth seeing. At times it may seem inconveniently depressing, but the ultimately inspiring tale of Paul Rusesabagina overcomes the sadness. “Hotel Rwanda” has something important to teach us about an overlooked time in history and the ability of one individual to make an impact on the lives of over 1,000 people through the selfless act of standing up against inhumanity.
