Hotel Rwanda

Released 2004
Stars Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix
Directed by Terry George

In 1994 in Rwanda, a million members of the Tutsi tribe were killed by members of the Hutu tribe in a massacre that took place while the world looked away. "Hotel Rwanda" is not the story of that massacre. It is the story of a hotel manager who saved the lives of 1,200 people by being, essentially, a very good hotel manager.

The man is named Paul Rusesabagina, and he is played by Don Cheadle as a man of quiet, steady competence in a time of chaos. This is not the kind of man the camera silhouettes against mountaintops, but the kind of man who knows how things work in the real world, who uses his skills of bribery, flattery, apology and deception to save these lives who have come into his care.

Summary by Roger Ebert

I'll never understand the endless cycle of civil war and genocide in Africa. This movie helps a little bit in that you see it's a cycle of one group being oppressed and then taking revenge, but why is it so widespread in all of Africa? Is it because Africans don't have the hundreds of years of civilization that the West has experienced? We certainly wage a lot of war, but, with the exception of the Nazis, we don't perform atrocities like this. Sadly, this Rwandan incident was nothing unusual for Africa, and that's probably why the West ignored it.

The movie does a wonderful job of showing Paul as a man who's a reluctant hero. He's really only concerned about his family's welfare and the image of the hotel, but slowly he realizes he can't turn his back on those who need his help. The movie's very successful in telling his character's story, and it does a decent job of showing the U.N. General's desire to intervene but his inability to do so. What it doesn't do very well is establish who the Hutus and Tutsis are. I was confused about who the different parties were and exactly why they were fighting. I thought it was interesting that it was the Dutch who created the two tribes based on traits that were more African or European, but I couldn't tell them apart. I think the movie cast a light-skinned woman to play Paul's wife, Tatiana, to give us a sense that the two sides looked different, but if you watch the special features you see they all look the same. Even the Rwandans had to look at identity cards to see which tribe you were stamped with. It reminded me of the psychological experiment back in the 1950's when they split a kindergarten class in half based on eye color, and told them one group was better and smarter than the other group. After a couple of weeks, they told the kids they made a mistake, it was actually the other group of kids who were better and smarter. What they saw was a kindergarten version of the Hutus versus the Tutsis. It's a good thing they didn't give the kids machetes, or it would have gotten bloody. --Bill Alward, August 29, 2005