makes us feel ashamed

Rating: 8/10 (23 April 2005)

This movie is not what I expected from a movie with such a subject. You hear about genocide all the time, the UN colonel says it and I think the news team says it, too. But words alone won't do, not in a movie. All you see is a few hundred bodies scattered on the street. There are no close ups, almost no scenes where you actually see how the Hutu shoot someone and there is only little blood (genocide and no blood? Hallo?!). And as for the role of the UN I can say this: Colonel Oliver behaves like a small child whose lollipop was taken away. You get the impression all they do is standing around, waiting for some other team of soldiers who protect the citizens. This is so ridiculous. I was too shocked at the image of the UN to be shocked when I should have been. Furthermore the movie shows a short time span, so you don't get the context in which this war takes place. Only once it is mentioned that the Tutsi (who are now slaughtered) suppressed the Hutu. But of course the Hutu are the bad guys and we are not to like them. At this point the movie pushes the audience's sympathy in one direction. Although Hotel Rwanda is not a documentary, I would have liked to think about the conflict and decide who is right (if indeed anyone is) and who is not myself.
There is one scene that really stunned me. After Colonel Oliver has learned the Quick Reaction Force won't stay, he talks to Paul. He then says something that made me feel ashamed. We don't care about what happens in Rwanda. Personally, I don't even know where this country lies and I didn't know about what happened there in 1994 until I saw the movie. Maybe this is the real theme of the movie. Our attitude towards conflicts in Africa or pretty any country in the world apart from our own and the ones next to us. We see the news, say how terrible war is and that was it. I am ashamed and I love movies which make me feel this way. Hotel Rwanda really is a must-see.