Mention Rwanda to most people and they will know vaguely that something horrible happened there. Tell them that a million people were murdered as the world looked the other way, and they either get quiet or defensive.
This fact is important, and relevant, because “Hotel Rwanda” is a movie with a message, made by people who are not just perplexed about America’s questionable foreign policy, but irate. This is a drama made to stir up the pot, elicit sympathy, anger and guilt, and given what happened during 1994, and our country’s neglect of Congo and Sudan last year, it is not all that difficult to do.
In Rwanda, more than a million people were slaughtered as the Tutsi and Hutu tribes squabbled over control of the country. Encouraged by bigotry, racist radio personalities and the assassination of the country’s leader, the Hutu started destroying their counterparts as mob rule prevailed. But unlike so many cases of genocide, where there are clear religious or racial differences, the Tutsi and Hutu are nearly identical, only differentiated by the previous colonial government, which taught one group to hate the other.
And so as friends attack friends, neighbors kill neighbors and children become the target for the Hutu who seek to kill the next generation of the Tutsi, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) realizes that his home, as he knew it, is gone forever. Rusesabagina is the manager of an elite resort in Rwanda, where the tourists come for vacation, and where the country’s elites come for a free drink and good conversation.
Once the slaughter starts, his hotel quickly becomes an island in a sea of destruction/ Within days, United Nations peacekeepers have set up camp outside his front door, hundreds of desperate Tutsis rush to him looking for shelter and safety, and he soon finds his family, as well as 1,200 Rwandans under his care as they hide from the hell that exists only miles away.
“Hotel Rwanda” is really the story of this firestorm as seen through Rusesabagina’s eyes. In a decision that has angered critics of the film, who see “ Rwanda” as a sugar-coated story of mass-murder, we see what Rusesabagina sees and exist within his sphere of hope and persistence.
But as a movie, this is a stunningly effective and heart-wrenching perspective. How many movies have we seen in the past year, where the intimacy of a single story was lost amid a sea of faceless and nameless victims? “ Rwanda” is distinctly a story of Rusesabagina’s plight, made all that much more suspenseful because he had a chance at surviving. And when he emerges from his oasis, seeing road after road littered with bodies, the scope of the atrocities is not lost in the slightest.
The film rests solely on the shoulders of two actors. Cheadle, as Rusesabagina, projects a quiet dignity, putting on the same suit and smile every day, that makes his rare emotional outbursts and desperation that much more striking.
And the other is Nick Nolte, as a U.N. official, who is the focal point of the film’s political messages surrounding the apathy and ignorance of the West. In one haunting speech, he tells Rusesabagina that no one cares about his poor, black country, and that his life is a lost cause.
There are flaws in “ Rwanda,” Rusesabagina’s death-defying escapes coming to resemble each other, echoing the same pattern of tension, chaos and release. But it is the film’s steadfast conviction, when a powerful message emerges unfiltered and unhindered, that makes “ Rwanda” stand out.
This is the kind of film that makes you sad, then makes you mad, and leaves you breathless, realizing that the reality of what occurred is surely far more horrifying than anything that can be captured on film.