Hotel Rwanda

I went to the Cedar Lee last night and saw Hotel Rwan­da. It was even heav­ier than I expect­ed it to be and it def­i­nite­ly bore a bit of dis­cus­sion with my friend and a bit more thought now. You can lis­ten to an NPR inter­view with Don Chea­dle here. Spoil­ers with­in.

This is essen­tial­ly a film about West­ern guilt/White Man’s Bur­den. And it should be. Some back­ground [the pieces are in the movie for you to put togeth­er]: The Rwan­dan Geno­cide is an indi­rect result of Bel­gian colo­nials divid­ing peo­ple based on height, skin-col­or and nose-breadth. [WTF?] The Tut­si were the taller, lighter-skinned, skin­nier-nosed folk, and since they are clos­er to being white, the Bel­gians put them in charge. [WTF?] So when the Bel­gians gave up Rwan­da as a colony they gave the pow­er to the Hutu. [WTF?]

So that is a bit of back­ground and the Wikipedia pro­vides much more. The movie starts on the eve of the peace accord and assas­si­na­tion of the pres­i­dent that sparks the geno­cide. Paul Rus­esabag­i­na [Don Chea­dle] is the high­est rank­ing black African work­ing at a Beli­gan hotel that caters to rich West­ern­ers. He is both qui­et­ly effec­tive and obse­quious, always doing favors to influ­en­tial peo­ple to store up favors for him­self. Don Cheadle’s act­ing is great for the very tough part that he had. His char­ac­ter changes much­ly, as any­one put under that much stress is cer­tain to do. As for cin­e­matog­ra­phy, it is stan­dard for the most part, but some scenes, most­ly cre­pus­cu­lar ones, blew my mind. A brief one is an estab­lish­ing dis­solve in front of the hotel, but the most pow­er­ful one is a fog­gy dawn along an aban­doned road. When the shit hits the fan, the white folk bail, with glum looks and guilt-rid­den hearts and none of that film shit mat­ters any­more, only the hor­ror.. We see some actu­al footage of the geno­cide [in long-shot, thank­ful­ly], and it is like get­ting clubbed in the stom­ach. There are many scenes in the movie that are like get­ting clubbed in the stom­ach, and hear­ing that it was toned down [from the NPR inter­view] makes me feel sick. The ter­ror and unpre­dictabil­i­ty of the army and the Inter­a­hamwe mili­tia force Paul’s char­ac­ter to stretch every favor that he is owed and use all his wiles to pro­tect his fam­i­ly [ini­tial­ly] and then every­one at the hotel.

It is our [mine, the West­’s fault] that these things came to pass to such an extent. Our ulti­mate indif­fer­ence to the peo­ple of Africa is blunt­ly described by Colonel Oliv­er [Nick Nolte] when he self-hat­ing­ly explains the UN’s ratio­nale as to why he is not per­mit­ted to evac­u­ate the refugees in the hotel by say­ing to Paul “You aren’t even a nig­ger. You’re an African.” When Jack [Joaquin Phoenix], an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist, is ques­tioned by Paul in regard to aid he says [I’m para­phras­ing] “Peo­ple will look at the footage and say ‘That’s ter­ri­ble’ and go back to eat­ing their din­ner.” After mak­ing such effec­tive points, I was real­ly brought down by the end of the film when a blonde-haired blue-eyed Red Cross work­er, Madame Archer [Cara Sey­mour], pret­ty much serves to assuage at least part of the guilt we are by now feel­ing; there­by mak­ing it palat­able and let­ting us behave exact­ly as Jack said we would. We see the film, say “That’s ter­ri­ble” and then can go home and for­get about it, per­haps this time because it hap­pened ten years ago. Damn us for always try­ing to give movies uplift­ing end­ings; espe­cial­ly when we should­n’t be uplift­ed at all.

This film is out at an appro­pri­ate time, con­sid­er­ing the effects of the recent tsuna­mi. While the polit­i­cal and moral effects of the Rwan­dan geno­cide were/are much harsh­er, and the loss of life more extreme; there is still a need for some good acts of char­i­ty and social jus­tice on our parts. I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly see this as a White Man’s Bur­den in the exact sense of the phrase, because even if the West isn’t direct­ly respon­si­ble for what­ev­er prob­lems occur, we as peo­ple always have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to do what we can to fight suf­fer­ing and injus­tice when­ev­er we see it. Obvi­ous­ly this movie got me a bit fired up; a good thing. I just wish that the end­ing had­n’t been such a copout.