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Incredible movies can be made about the strength some individuals find within themselves in the face of terrible things men do to other men. Life is Beautiful, where an Italian man is caught up in Hitler’s Holocaust, and The Killing Fields, about Pol Pot’s ethnic cleansing in Cambodia, are two which come easily to mind. Hotel Rwanda is easily worthy of joining this company. That Don Cheadle and Terry George did not win Oscars two years ago–Cheadle lost Best Actor to Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles and George lost Best Original Screenplay to Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry and Pierre Bismuth for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--is something I don’t understand.
Cheadle portrays Paul Rusesabagina, local manager of a swank hotel owned by Belgian airline Sabena in the capital of Rwanda and a Hutu married to a Tutsi woman, as fighting between the Hutu and the Tutsi for control of the African nation comes to a head. The movie opens the night before everything comes crashing down, as Hutu militia rebel against their own President; they assassinate him after he signs a cease fire pact and claim it was Tutsi rebels. This is justification enough to begin a horrific massacre in which the death toll quickly runs to a million or more Tutsi men, women and children.
Cheadle is reasonably well connected and intelligent. He’s been paying off one of the key Hutu generals (played by Fana Mokoena, who reminds me of Yaphet Kotto) and is able to leverage that relationship, with some fast thinking, to keep his hotel a sanctuary for over a thousand people who would have otherwise surely been among the bodies littering lawns and roads. Nick Nolte has a good supporting bit as an American colonel running the UN Peacekeeping force in Rwanda, frustrated by protocol which makes him unable to do much more than stand in between militiamen and potential victims.
Hotel Rwanda also reminds me of City of God in that both are stories of incredible sadness about people who are unfortunate enough to live in places which Americans and other Westerners simply don’t connect to or care about. Neither Rwanda nor the slums of Brazil have any resources we find useful, no terrorist groups have emerged from them, and therefore they don’t register on our radar. Bob Herbert has been attempting to raise consciousness on similar tragedy going on right now in Darfur, Sudan, but despite having the bully pulpit of several columns a week on the OpEd page of The New York Times I don’t believe he’s saved one life after writing columns for more than two years.
definitely recommended
Nolte played a part inspited by Canada’s Romeo Dallaire. You missed the Canadian flag on his uniform.
Great movie. Very meaningful. It is so frustrating with the US and Canada wasting time and money in the middle east when they could be doing good elsewhere.
Stan, thanks for pointing out the error about Nolte’s character’s nationality. On a 27″ TV screen and with my less than stellar eyesight the badge was probably just too small for me to pick out.
I agree the situation in Rwanda and other parts of Africa are tragedies. If you read my political blog (http://www.billsaysthis.com/wp) you’ll see that I hardly support the current Administration or its policies.