Hotel Rwanda

[dlbpharmd]

I watched this movie last night. This is about the massacre of 1,000,000 Rwandans (members of the Tutsi clan) by their enemies, the Hutu. Don Cheadle plays Paul, a hotel manager who hides and protects over 1200 Tutsi and Hutu refugees and thereby saves their lives. It was a powerful piece of dramatic filmmaking, but definitely not for the soft hearted. Anyone else seen it?

[Brinn]

Yup, thought it was very good!

[Alynna Lis Eachann]

I've been meaning to see it. The reviews hyped it up so much I began to wonder who was paying them off. Is it really as well done as people have said?

[onewyteduck]

I thought it was a very good movie. The world could use a few more people like Paul Rusesabaugina.

[dlbpharmd]

Is it really as well done as people have said?

The movie is very well made. Cheadle does an excellent job and certainly deserved the AA nomination that he received. It's not overly graphic (as was the case in Schindler's List) but still disturbing at times.

[duchess of malfi]

I watched it this morning and it is one of the best films I have seen in a long, long time.

The violence, while enough for a PG13 rating, is more implied than graphic, given the genocide.

It is very disturbing, though, in that throughout the entire film you sit there thinking to yourself "There's no way any of these people is going to make it out alive."

Well, and the entire circumstances of what was going on is extremely disturbing, of course.

But it is also filled with hope, and shows what a difference one decent person can make in even the worst imaginable conditions.

[dlbpharmd]

Glad you liked it, Duchess.

[Avatar]

Is that the one about them being kept safe in a protected UN compound, and then the UN and everybody withdrawing and leaving them behind in the end?

--A

[Usivius]

I've read about it .. I really dont think my heart could take someone's interpretation of it...

[duchess of malfi]

Is that the one about them being kept safe in a protected UN compound, and then the UN and everybody withdrawing and leaving them behind in the end?

--A

Spoiler

The manager of a swanky hotel that is owned by a big company in Belgium ends up taking in over 1000 refugees from both tribes (he is a Hutu - his wife and many of his neighbors are Tutsi) and somehow manages to keep them safe in the hotel compound from the rampaging militia groups committing genocide, at great risk to himself and his family. He does this through a huge variety of means including bribery, calling in all favors owed to him by a large number of people he knows through his work (both domestic and overseas VIPs), and bullshitting leaders of the genocide with threats of overseas intervention. Some of the UN people did try to help, though their hands were tied as they were not supposed to shoot their guns. Also trying to help was the company who owned the hotel and put a lot of pressure on the Belgium and French governments to pressure the Rwandan military in turn to keep the hotel property safe and to get the employees and guests safely out through UN means.

[Avatar]

Spoiler

Aah, A hotel compound...(I actually meant a school compound). But in the end they leave without having got the people out, right?

If I'm thinking of the same one, I just saw a documentary where they showed the movie to survivors of that particular massacre...seeing the people watching it was an education in itself, and they were impressed on the whole, only pointing out that the ending was inaccurate.

Spoiler

I believe the movie shows them all getting killed in the compound, when actually, they attempted to flee, and were eventually run to ground in a field some distance away.

Seeing men talk about how their friends, people they had been out partying with the night before, with whom they'd shared meals, with whose children their children had played hacked at them with panga's was...something. I don't know what. High impact.

Problem is often that in much of Africa, allegiance is given to the tribal chief. (For which government is a substitue. And if he tells you to go and kill all the Tutsi's because they're actually the ones causing all your problems, you do. The habit of utter obediance is ingrained to a large extent, and people lack the education and exposure that would otherwise make them resistant to orders like that.

(Take the s' off the end of your [spoilers] Duchess. It's singular.

--A

[dlbpharmd]

Spoiler

Don Cheadle's character (can't remember his name, sorry) does get alot of the people he protected out, according to the movie. I don't remember the scenes you're talking about, Av.

[duchess of malfi]

I do not remember those scenes, either. I think we might be talking about two different films here.

Spoiler

In the movie, the people in the hotel compound are, in the end, safely taken away in a UN convoy after the UN leader on the ground makes a deal with the rebel forces. In order to get them out, the trucks in the convoy have to actually cross the front where the army, who wants to kill them, is fighting against the rebels, who want them to be OK. The man who managed the hotel, and who faced down several death squads and some of the leaders of the genocide with only his voice, pursuasion, his phone, and some of the supplies and money left behind in the hotel, and his family are now living in Belgium. The company who owned the hotel arranged for them to come there to live.

I am glad that my 10,000th post is one about this quite wonderful film. My first post - made years ago - was a sex joke.

[Avatar]

Seems like they are two different ones. Will try and see if I can find out what the name of the one I'm thinking of is.

--A

[Cord Hurn]

I was mesnerized watching a social conscience biography called Hotel Rwanda (2004). When the region of Africa now known as Rwanda was ruled by the Belgians, they favored some of the local people and gave them positions of authority for possessing such physical characteristics as thin noses and tall stature. Those favored natives were called Tutsis, and the people they were given rule over were called Hutus. After the Belgians surrendered power, elections in Rwanda often favored the more numerous Hutus over the Tutsis. Old resentments among some of the Hutus persisted, and these vengeful Hutus would refer to Tutsis (and the Hutus who let old grievances) go as cockroaches. When a Hutu president leaves a peace conference with some Tutsi rebels and has his plane shot from the sky, some bloodthirsty Hutu generals blame all of the Tutsi minority for the murder, and institute a genocide offensive against them, which will result in a 100-day massacre in 1994 that nearly kills a million Rwandans.

The film's protagonist is Paul Rusesbagina (Don Cheadle), who manages a nice hotel in Kigali (the Rwandan capital) called Hotel Mille Collines. Paul, a Hutu, bad nothing against Tutsis, is only concerned about the welfare of his family. His wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo) is a Tutsi, and they have four children together. At the hotel, he has the help of good servants like Odetta (Lebo Mashile), but also has to put up with lazy and disloyal servants like Gregoire (Tony Kgoroge), who was hired by the owners and has ties with them. When the Hutu militia decides to kill off as many Tutsis as they can, and the United Nations peacekeeper Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte) informs Paul that the European tourists and business people are leaving, that galvanizes Paul to turn the hotel into a sanctuary for those whose lives are threatened. Paul bribes the Hutu generals with everything he has to leave the hotel employees and the refugees alone. He welcomes Tutsi orphan children brought in by Red Cross worker Pat Anchor (Cara Seymour).

Paul bravely saves the lives of 1,268 Rwandans, even though Gregoire informs the Hutu militia that Paul is hiding people. Paul convinces the Tutsis and the moderate Hutus who ally with them to call people they know out of country to convince them to give them refuge, and many get offers to leave and take the offers By being rated PG-13 instead of R, the movie manages to not be as gory as it could have been, for which I am grateful. Hotel Rwanda is inspiring, worth checking in to, thus worth checking out.