Hotel Rwanda

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How does one write about heroism and at the same moment describe genocide, and the murder of the defenseless? How is possible to attire the killing of a million people in some form of grace? It’s difficult, but Director/Writer Terry George accomplishes both with Hotel Rwanda by juxtaposing those comparisons of human character that shed light onto the darkest deeds imaginable? There will be those who will chose not to see this movie because they will have heard about the content and feel that it is not for them. However, I encourage everyone to see this film, to witness that bit of light that is revealed, those human qualities that exemplify the hero figure; light, compassion and concern in the face of, and regardless of absolute personal peril.

Hotel Rwanda is the true story of how hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) a Hutu, saved 1,228 people, mostly Tutsi, from certain, grisly death. This ethnically vivid film portrays the events of 1994, when the nations of the world chose a path of indifference while the Hutu majority of Rwanda took revenge on the Tutsi minority for years of suppression. In one scene at the hotel bar a Western journalist (Joaquin Phoenix) asks about the past and is told that the Belgians had picked the Tutsi to run the government and larger business’s because of their lighter skin and thinner noses. Although this is a simplification of a problem that preceded the Europeans by nearly 400 years, nearly one million Tutsi men, women and children were slaughtered in less than three months.

At the start of this human conflagration, the Hotel Rwanda, the finest hotel in the capital of Kigali, is an island in a sea of destruction. When U.N. troops, under the command of Canadian Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte) arrive with orders to supervise the evacuation of the hotel, spirits soar until it is clear that the only ones to be evacuated and escape the massacre are the whites. This scene is absolutely heart wrenching and the awful hopelessness of the situation becomes apparent when Oliver, upset with his orders, makes it clear to Paul that the rest of the world doesn’t care.

Rusesabagina has spent most of his life taking care of the guests of the Hotel Rwanda, and over the years he banked favors with the local police and military. This account he taps dry as the pressure mounts for him to turn over the all of Tutsi in the hotel. Those people include his Tutsi wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo) and half-Tutsi, half-Hutu children. The suspense hurtles forward as time and again the hotel comes under attack by machete wielding Hutus bent on killing all the “cockroaches.” Finally, with an agreement between the Hutu and Tutsi to exchange prisoners, Oliver returns to escort the Tutsi band to safety.

There is no surprise ending here, it’s history. There’s no walking out with a light step, this is deeper than simple drama. There is a walking away with recollection. We look at Africa today and ponder the complexity of its ethnic wars with a slight temptation to ignore them or to blame it all on tribalism, but this may be a time to remember Germany, Russia, Cambodia, Mexico, Bosnia ... the early history of our own country.