Hotel Rwanda

I had time in my day to catch a matinee of this unsettling look at the flipside of humanitarianism.

Don Cheadle has well earned the praise he's received for his portrayal of this troubled hotel manager just trying to keep in together in the midst of chaos, and instead, winds up saving the lives of 1,268 people (primarily Tutsis) who would otherwise have been systematically eliminated by Hutu militia.

In an interview that plays over the radio during the film, some lackey for the UN says, "...there have been acts of genocide committed." The interviewer retorts, "But how many 'acts of genocide' will constitute genocide?" You get the sense that there's two different answers; the one that applies to Africans killing Africans, and then the answer that applies to everyone else.

I won't go into the film all that much, except to say that it's really disheartening to see it has only made $1.6 million thus far in its release. Perhaps people are staying away because it seems a movie about a genocide would be a heady swirl of violence. In actuality, the movie could have been very graphic in its covering of the slaughter that eventually left a million-plus dead, but it fortunately kept the depictions to an absolute minimum and focused on the human stories behind the true-life protagonist, who was a Hutu, and would have been in fine shape had he abandoned his Tutsi wife and children at the outset of the revolution.

An example of this is in the final hour of the film, when Rusesabagina (the manager portrayed by Cheadle) needs to go acquire food for his hotel-confined refugees, and what follows is one of the most effective portrayals of brutality I've seen in awhile, but it's orchestrated with subtlety. It is almost Hitchcockian in its execution, as the effects of the brutality are seen, but not the acts themselves. Cheadle's brilliance as an actor shines in this scene, and also in his ability to reveal the psychological turmoil this man dwelled in throughout these attrocities.

I would hope this film is not a victim of the same ignorance endured by the 1994 genocide. Hotel Rwanda deserves an audience. It deserves to fuel conversation. It should stand as an example of the kinds of film Hollywood should seek to make more often.