A must watch movie for its brilliant portrayal of varied human personalities

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2006)

It is a hard hitting civil war(between the rebelling Tutsis and the ruling Hutus) movie based on true incidents during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It depicts how the central character Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu, manager of a four-star Hotel uses his diplomatic skills and political contacts tries to save hordes of Tutsis while he himself is in grave danger of being hunted down by the Hutus for harboring Tutsis. It depicts wonderfully how gruesome ethnic hatred is induced by the State to maintain its political clout. A wonderful melange of politics at various hierarchies. It depicts how regional politics for control instigates mob mentality and gruesome genocide, how international politics keeps UN from taking any affirmative action, how individual politics played by Paul Rusesabagina helps save lives. It skillfully presents the contrast between how common people torn by ethnic strife and witness to thousands of killings, many of them near and dear, accept their fate while some others in power try to extract every single ounce they can to fulfill their personal greed. A must watch movie for its brilliant portrayal of varied human personalities.
PS: A brief perspective on the Rwanda genocide can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide . The book by UN general Lieutenant-General RomÃ©o Dallaire "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda" and the documentary film with the same name are definitely worth a watch. While watching the movie I could not stop thinking about how history teaches us nothing. After the Rwandan genocide, every one went about condemning the genocide, the world body has setup a war crimes tribunal, Bill Clinton has termed the genocide the biggest failure of his administration and still today we have Iraq burning on the same ethnic conflict, Darfur in Sudan enduring a killing of 400,000 people(and that's just the official figure). Hope history teaches us something. Still I'm sure, in future, politics will be played and men in power(or the others seeking it) will try to instigate petty differences among people to fulfill their own ambitions. But, let's hope this is not done at the cost of millions and millions of lives for human life is too precious to be lost on the basis of some caste or creed. Obviously the change won't come from the preperators of these heinous crimes as they have high stakes in the game. But the sufferers are just puppets in the show. They should be aware of the fact that they remain the ones who bore the brunt of the conflict no matter which "side" belonged and no matter which ever side "wins". They should abandon the mob mentality. Only then will there be hope and only then may be history won't repeat itself.