Haunting, tragic, beautiful

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 2005)

Sometimes only an objective, first-person account can give an outsider a real, authentic perspective on a situation. I had read about Rwanda in the papers, watched the news. Seen facts and figures and statistics. What this movie does is more real than that: it takes you to that moment in time which changes a country. It makes you understand that a country is made up of individual people, that each one has a story and a choice. It shows how quickly things can get out of hand, how easy it is to divide a people, how tragic the consequences. This movie doesn't hold back and sugar-coat the brutality and drama. The massacre was of unspeakable proportion. But Hotel Rwanda also tells of awesome courage, real deeds by real people. Just as shocking it is to see the bloody brutality of the war, it is even more amazing to see the steely resolve of those people who decided to do the right thing come what may, even at the risk of their own lives. The movie's graphic images haunted me, but the overall feeling it left behind was that of hope and courage. I'm humbled by the deeds of those very real people of Hotel Rwanda and hope that in my life I'll never have to make the choices they did.