A Million Corpses

Rating: 9/10 (21 October 2008)

By the time this movie ends, you really have no choice but to sit back and take a deep breath as you process the insanity of the fact that this really happened. A million corpses. That's the note this movie ends on, in estimating the carnage caused in Rwanda as a result of the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis in the early 1990's. "Hotel Rwanda" offers just one glimpse into the madness - but a soberingly powerful glimpse.
Don Cheadle is brilliant as Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a Belgian owned hotel in the capital of Kigali, who is left in charge when the Europeans leave and finds himself the sole protector of what would become hundreds of desperate Tutsis, who find shelter in the hotel. Paul is a Hutu who is married to a Tutsi, and who is horrified by the escalating violence. Sophie Okonedo is equally brilliant as Paul's wife Tatiana, under threat for being a Tutsi, her children under threat, her brother and his family missing in the midst of the chaos. You get drawn into this family's nightmare, but the movie never becomes solely about them. It's always about the insanity, and the complete failure of the international community to do anything about it. From that point of view, Nick Nolte plays Col. Oliver, a Canadian officer in command of far too few UN peacekeepers, who knows what's happening but is powerless to stop it. Oliver is essentially a representation of Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, who was the UN Commander in Rwanda at the time. Nolte wasn't as brilliant as Cheadle or Okonedo. I thought he struggled a bit with the part, although he drew out the character's frustration and anger at the UN's impotence.
The movie reminded me a bit of "Schindler's List" - particularly as Paul bargained with Hutu officers for the lives of Tutsis, just as Schindler bargained with Nazis for the lives of Jews. The first hour or so I thought was a bit slow, although director Terry George built the suspense nicely, and one of the more interesting parts of the movie came in that first hour with an explanation of the difference between Hutus and Tutsis. It apparently isn't a traditional tribal designation. The Belgian colonizers divided the natives into these two groups, based on the lightness of their skin and the wideness of their noses! There's no happy ending in this movie. There is a family reunion of sorts (a partial one, anyway) but the haunting memory for me was that closing caption - "a million corpses." Even after writing all this, the more I think about it, the more I wonder - how do you do justice to a movie like this in a short review? 9/10