'Acts of genocide' and acts of bravery

Rating: 10/10 (2 March 2007)

Just throwing in my 10 points to add up to the total. I haven't seen 'Sometimes in April' yet, so maybe I will indeed scratch my head thinking that one's even better on the Rwandan tragedy, as some say, but right now I'm under the impression of 'Hotel Rwanda'. And I am already pretty sure that those who say this film is a 'light' version of whatever exactly happened are wrong. This film doesn't try to win an Oscar by using brutal pictures a lot to inscribe itself in the viewer's brain. (Though it will still make you feel the violence from time to time.) It's real drama. The background, the genocide, the war and all that, they are important factors, but the point is the drama of hotelier Paul Rusesabagina's family. To steal a US diplomat's words from the movie, you can see some 'acts of genocide', but you won't see 'genocide', at least not for most of the time. And you'll see acts of bravery, but not of the reckless type, not the kind of Hollywood heroism that is an euphemism for stupidity.
You can find those very strong scenes in this movie that are so powerful that they will have an effect on you no matter how many times you watch the film. One of those scenes pulls off nothing less than giving the audience a genuine laughter amid a sea of horror, genuine, honest laughter, not forced at all, not trying-to-be-satirical-when-inappropriate, and so not distasteful at all. Check it out. It's scenes like that that reinforce my impression that 'Hotel Rwanda' was in fact an outstandingly good film.
One picture that inexplicably stayed very long there in my mind. An RPF soldier firing after militiamen. We don't see where he is shooting. Just that he takes up one textbook shooting position after the other, feeling probably a little proud of himself not being just another peasant given a gun. This is a very small detail that you'll see only from a distance. Now, where you find such hidden values that is a good film. About another war-torn, structurally burdened state, where the warrior-minded have enough providers of the above mentioned textbooks who are ready to supply them from the outside.
Don't watch this film as a documentary. If you want insight gained from this film, ponder rather the analysis it gives of how a refuge can be kept safe in the midst of a structural war (think of 'satellites' and 'phone calls' and the like). As long as it is realistic in the treatment of that issue, it doesn't really matter how many small details it got wrong as to the rest of the conflict. It's focus is strong and that's what matters.