Hotel Rwanda - genocide and conscience

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2005)

My 19-year old son and I saw this movie when it opened in New York.It's one of those stories, which is so powerful in fact that it need notlike so much of Hollywood's farebe over dramatized. Fortunately, director Terry George kept the storytelling simple and straightforward. As a result, the movie depicts the manager of the Hotel Milles Collines in Kigali, Rwanda, as a good man who rises to a state of grace under fire.
Early on, as ethnic tensions mount, there's a brief discussion about the ethnic differences between Rwanda's Tutsi and Hutu peoples. The physical differences are negligible. As one of the script lines says, "They had to measure our noses to see if there was any difference." But historically, the Belgian colonizers of this country selected some of the natives as colonial administrators, leaving the majority to do the their bidding. That's the difference.
As war breaks out, simple survival becomes a daily struggle. Hotel Manager Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle in his finest role to date) becomes an adept at sparing the war's refugees, lodged in his care after the Europeans visitors have been evacuated. While a few of the film's reviewers on this Board expressed disappointment over a perceived lack of drama, I'd argue they weren't watching or listening closely. The drama resides in the hotel manager's quality of thought and action, premeditating and improvising the stratagems that allow him and his wards to live another day. Stratagems of bribes, promises, favors owed and collected, words and deeds, which a book I once read termed "the weapons of the weak." Thank god, good people rise to the fore in the worst of circumstances, armed only with their wits and willing to pit them against guns and the men and boys who wield them..
A long time ago, I heard an interview on the NPR show "Fresh Air." The guest described the "ethnic differences" between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. Again the differences were negligible. But the guest noted, the racial distinctions were so similar that the different groupings (Bosnians, Croats and Serbs) often resorted to mutilation to eradicate the very appearance of similarity.
When Don Cheadle appeared as a guest on Jon Stewart's "Daily Show," he noted it took 5 years for Terry George to raise the funding to make this film. Kudoes go out to him and (from the credits) the British, South African and Italian interests, which jointly invested in the production to bring this kind of story to light.