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Hotel Rwanda |
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Hotel Rwanda |
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CASS' CLIP (WARNING: **spoilers below**)
It's been said that your life can drastically change in the blink of an eye. In April, 1994, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) blinked, and the comfortable life he created for he and his family was gone.
Paul Rusesabagina (a Hutu) is a loving husband, a doting father, and a well-respected member of his community. Paul is a reliable hotel manager at the four-star Milles Collines Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda. He knows which prominent foreign guests need special catering, and is acutely aware that he must also grease the palms of some of Rwanda's elite military and political leaders to keep things running smoothly at the hotel. Also looming in the air is the tribal unrest in his country. Paul believes a resolution is on the horizon because the United Nations is attempting to broker a peace agreement between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes. ["The United Nations are here now. The world press are watching. The peace has been signed. Let this process work."] Paul's apolitical stance -- "These days, I have not time for rallies or politics" -- quickly changes when Rwanda's Hutu president is assassinated. But it's not until Paul returns home from work and he finds his wife, Tatiana (a Tutsi) (Sophie Okonedo), their children, along with his neighbors huddled in his home trying to protect themselves against the Hutu militia, that he begins to understand the impending insurgence. The government owned radio station incites chaos with its propaganda rhetoric by calling Tutsis "cockroaches". Anarchy erupts when the Hutu militia begin to systematically slaughter the Tutsis, as well as any Hutu sympathizers.
Now, Paul's main concern is to protect his own family but Tatiana wants him to also help their Tutsi neighbors. "Tatiana, all day I work to please this officer, diplomat, or some other guests to store up favors so if there is a time we need help I have powerful people I can call upon," Paul explains. And that's exactly what Paul will do -- use every stored favor, along with bribing his way -- to survive the Hutus genocidal rampage. The safest place for his family (and now his neighbors) to seek refuge is the Milles Collines Hotel. ["The Milles Collines Hotel is an oasis of calm for all our loyal customers. . . I assure you the United Nations has everything under control."] Paul believes help is on its way because the international press is reporting these atrocities to the world. "I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene," Paul explains to Jack (Joaquin Phoenix) a cameraman. Jack knows that nothing will come of this footage and that people will simply say, "Oh, God! That's horrible,' and then go back to eating their dinner." Paul's sense of security is further crushed when a U.N. solider, Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte), tells him that his 300 troops are there as peacekeepers, not peacemakers.
Basically, they're sitting ducks because the hotel has access to only 4 peacekeepers and they aren't allowed to use their weapons to protect them.
When the international press begins to report these atrocities to the world, the only thing that happens is that all the whites are evacuated and all the Africans are abandoned. Now, the Milles Collines Hotel turns into a refugee camp and Paul and his family are no longer safe. With nothing left to bribe his attackers with, can Paul maintain his level headedness or be subservient enough to placate the right people so that he and his family can survive?
DA 411
Hotel Rwanda will easily be compared to Schindler's List, The Killing Fields and The Pianist because it's another movie telling the harrowing tale of yet another genocidal rampage. Instead of depicting the gratuitous manner in which these innocent victims were slaughtered, co-writer, Keir Pearson, and writer/director Terry George, focus on chronicling the life of hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, and the 100 days in 1994 that he miraculously saved 1,268 refugees from the Hutu militias. It is through Paul's eyes that we witness the real-life horrors. "There will be no rescue. No intervention forces. We can only save ourselves. Many of you know influential people abroad. You must call these people. You must tell them what will happen to us. Say goodbye. But when you say goodbye, say it as though you are reaching through the phone, holding their hand. Let them know if they let go of that hand, you will die. We must shame them into sending help."
The world's unwillingness to intervene resulted in one million Rwandans being murdered. Why no intervention? Colonel Oliver said it best. "The West, all the super powers. . .they think you're dirt, you're worthless. . .You're the smartest man here. You could own this hotel, except for one thing. You're Black. You're not even a nigger. You're an African. They're not going to stop this slaughter."
Several Black actors were born to play certain roles -- e.g., Denzel Washington as Malcolm X; Will Smith as Ali; Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles; and now Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina. The fluidity and sensitivity in which Don Cheadle portrays Paul Rusesabagina is exactly why he is nominated for an Oscar. Movie-goers will forget that they are watching an actor act because Cheadle is so in tune with his character, that his believability is elevated to a higher level of performance. There is one scene in which Paul sees the enormity of the massacres and his entire being is so gripped with anguish, that he can no longer suffocate his pain. Excellent!!! No matter how small [After the Sunset] or big [Devil in a Blue Dress or A Lesson Before Dying] his roles have been, I absolutely love watching Cheadle do his thang. I predict that this will be the year that this unappreciated Hollywood actor, Don Cheadle, will walk away with the Oscar. Sophie Okonedo, who played Paul's wife, Tatiana Rusesabagina, is also nominated for her riveting performance. She understands her wifely duties, allowing her husband to be the man that he is, but lovingly reminds him that they are in this struggle together. Cheadle and Okonedo are perfectly matched and I never felt manipulated by their combined performances. Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix’s roles aren't significant enough to make an impact, so they're simply fillers for me.
After my parents saw Hotel Rwanda, my mother, a Jehovah's Witness, told me that she recalled reading about the Rwandan genocide in the Watchtower. Here's a snippet from the December 14, 1994, Watchtower.
"Both Rwanda and the neighboring country of Burundi are populated by the Hutu, a generally short, stocky Bantu people, and the Tutsi, a normally taller, lighter-skinned people who are also known as Watusi. . .Clashes between these ethnic groups have been recorded as far back as the 15th century. Yet, for the most part, they have lived together peacefully."
"At the time there were 15 congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses in and around Kigali. The city overseer, Ntabana Eugene, was a Tutsi. He, his wife, his son, and his nine-year-old daughter, Shami, were among the first persons slaughtered when the rampage of violence erupted. . .Six persons worked in the Translation Office of Jehovah's Witnesses in Kigali, four of them Hutu and two Tutsi. The Tutsi were Ananie Mbanda and Mukagisagara Denise. When the militia along with looters came to the house, they became angry at finding Hutu and Tutsi residing together. They wanted to kill Mbanda and Denise. 'They started to take the pins out of their grenades,' said Emmanuel Ngirente, one of the Hutu brothers, 'threatening to kill us, since we had among us their enemies…They wanted a large sum of money. We gave them all the money we had on us. . .When it became too dangerous for Mbanda and Denise to stay. . .arrangements were made for them to go with other Tutsi refugees to a nearby school. When the school was attacked, Mbanda and Denise were able to flee. They succeeded in crossing several roadblocks, but at one of them, all of the Tutsi were taken aside, and Mbanda and Denise were killed. . . As of July [1994], about 4,700 Witnesses and their companions were in refugee camps. 2,376 were in Goma, 454 in Bukavu, and 1,592 in Uvira."
To read more about the real the Paul Rusesabagina, go to:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6745922/print/1/displaymode/1098 and
http://www.immortalchaplains.org/Prize/Ceremony2000/Rusesabagina/rusesabagina.htm
CASS' CONCLUSION
Writer/director Terry George wrote about the time when Paul and Tatiana Rusesabagina took him to a technical college in Murambi Rwanda. "In April 1994, the Hutu mayor promised the Tutsi of the region protection if they gathered at that technical school. Forty thousand of them sought shelter and over the course of just four days they were slaughtered. Their bodies were thrown into pits and covered with lime. Somehow the lime preserved the bodies. Today scores of those bodies are laid out on tables in the rooms where they died. They are frozen in the last desperate moments of their agony, hands pleading, heads cradled by arms, skulls cracked open by merciless machetes. . .A solitary tall man looks after that sacred place. He is one of only four survivors. He has a hole the size of a nickel in his forehead where the execution bullet entered and failed. He led me to the lobby where there is a guest book. I signed it and a woman asked if I would like to make a contribution to the maintenance of the memorial site. I guess I had some two hundred dollars in my wallet. I gave her it all. She hugged me, almost in tears. She said it was the most money she could remember receiving. . . I made a promise there to make our film no matter what. Three years later it is done. It is called Hotel Rwanda. It doesn't tell the story of Murambi. I deliberately steered away from the overwhelming horror and tried to focus on the incredible resilience and courage of Paul Rusesabagina so that people would be moved and encouraged by the triumph of this great good man over evil. Hotel Rwanda is not about the ghosts of Murambi but it is for them. Please go and see it." [FLM Magazine -- Winter 2005].
I wholeheartedly concur -- Please go and see Hotel Rwanda!!
Pictures:
Hotel Rwanda
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Rated PG-13: running time: 121 minutes
Genre: Drama
Distributor: United Artists
Movie Theater: By Courtesy of United Artists
Directed by: Terry George
Written by: Keir Pearson, Terry George
Cast: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Desmond Dube, Antonio David Lyons, Mothusi Magano, Joaquin Phoenix, Cara Seymour, Mosa Kaiser, David O'Hara, Fana Mokoena, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Tony Kgoroge
Official site: http://www.mgm.com/ua/hotelrwanda/intro.html
IMDB site: Review Copyright Cassandra Henry, 2005
(click here to skip to this movie's rating)
chocolates, cigars, style. . .I swallowed all of it and they handed me
their shit. I have no history. I have no memory. I am a fool, Tesse." -- Paul
Copyright Cassandra Henry, 2005
EMAIL: cass@3blackchicks.com
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