DVD: Hotel Rwanda


Powerful, but horrifying and doubly sad when you realize we've learned very little

Schindler's List tells a single man's story within a part of history that most of us know, at least generally, about. Schindler's List served to specify and humanize again what always threatens to become distant and monolithic.

Hotel Rwanda, on the other hand, tells a single man's story to inform us about a larger history that most of us, sadly, know little about. The civil war and genocide that took place in Rwanda in the early 90s is particularly shameful because, as I learned from this movie, the concept of Hutus and Tutsis as two different groups within Rwanda was a completely artificial separation created by the Belgian colonials. So the Western colonials create the division, leave the two groups to fight it out and then do nothing to stop the slaughter when it turns horribly violent. Yup, feelin' proud.

I watched Maria Full of Grace earlier in the same day, and felt that the movie was one I endured with a sense of dread and little true engagement with the characters.

Hotel Rwanda is an entirely different story. Starting with Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina and going on to Sophie Okonedo as his wife, Desmond Dube as one of his loyal employees and even Cara Seymour as a Red Cross worker, these are characters who are human, yet ennobled by their willingness to put themselves on the line to help others. The situation goes from bad to worse, and the movie pulls you along, anxious, fearful, horrified, but always emotionally engaged and simultaneously ashamed of man's capacity for savagery and proud of man's capacity for selfless acts to help one another.

I disagree with reviews that said yeah, great performances in an average movie. That description is what I would apply to the aforementioned Maria Full of Grace. This movie was powerful and moving...and inspired me to not only read up a bit on Rwanda, but also to read some more about the Sudan today.

Because if the message of the movie is that we should never turn a blind eye again, then not enough people saw this movie!

Buy Hotel Rwanda at Amazon.com

Posted: Sun - July 3, 2005 at 09:03 PM       EmailFeedback

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