There is a scene in HOTEL RWANDA where Nick Nolte as a member of a U.N. peacekeeping squad, is explaining with more than a trace of righteous indignation to Don Cheadle, as the Rwandan trying to save 1200 of his fellow citizens from slaughter, exactly why the rest of world is going to sit by and do exactly nothing to intervene. It is as disturbing as anything else in the film because in it the audience recognizes the truth stripped of its diplomatic jargon and morally ambiguous double-speak. The reason that you will be left to die, he explains, is because you are African, and no one cares. Thats a heavy burden to bear, both for the victim and for the rest of world in whose name that decision is made and that alone would be sufficient reason to make this true story of the 1994 genocide required viewing. Instead, though, it does something as extraordinary as its hero in that rather than wallowing in the evil that men do, it focuses on what people can rise to when forced to face down that evil.
Extraordinary times bring out the extraordinary in people, and so it is with Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a swank hotel in Kigali, Rwanda in 1994. He can see to it that fresh lobster is on the menu and keep the military honchos who frequent the establishment happy with just the right word and the occasional bottle or two of single-malt scotch in a suitcase. When the simmering tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis, tensions exacerbated by the Belgian colonialists based on such things as the lightness of a persons skin or the width of a nose boil over, its those contacts that suddenly become a lifeline. Virtually overnight, a neighborhood becomes a killing field, and Paul, a Hutu, is watching a soldier put a gun to his Tutsi wifes head. Taking refuge in his Belgian-owned hotel, he has only his wits, the U.N. peacekeepers who arent allowed to fire their weapons, and a phone line to Europe to use against a military that is slowly closing in.
Terry George maintains a low key feel throughout, and it is that approach, removing the palliative shield of melodrama, that produces the chill in the gut. Plus it is set squarely in the same sort of reality that the audience shares. It may be Africa, but its a solidly middle-class suburbia. There is also the decision to keep scenes of the actual carnage to a minimum, thereby increasing their impact. A glimpse of a corpse-strew landscape through a bank of river fog, or women penned up in rape cages. There is that claustrophobic sense of isolation and helplessness in the hotel itself, as rumors spread and the only news comes from untrustworthy radio reports and the increasingly bad news delivered by the U.N. commander (Nick Nolte). Most disturbing are the familys reactions to the situation that bring home the danger in ways that are searing. Pauls son who witnesses something that left him covered in blood (we never find out what) and traumatized into near-catatonia, or Pauls playful flirting with his wife (Sophie Okonedo in a stunning, multi-faceted performance) that turns into a discussion of what she must do if the hotel is overrun. Nothing, says Paul to his stunned wife, is worse than dying by machete. George balances this out with Rusesabaginas realization that his words early on in the film, that he cant help a neighbor taken away in the dead of night because he must save his favors for his family, are more true than he could realize at the time, but that his family isnt just the people who are connected by blood. Its a dissonant chord in that it took a crisis for him to realize this, and that its a lesson still left for the rest of the world to learn.
Cheadle reminds us why he was nominated for an Oscar for his work in TRAFFIC, losing to Benicio del Toro, nominated for the same film for a performance of equal power. There is a look in his eyes, determination driven by fear and pure adrenalin in his tight-fisted performance, emotion kept under close check propelling the character to live moment to moment without stopping to think more than one or two steps ahead for fear of what might lie over that horizon, without slowing down the pace because to do so would be to collapse under the weight of the responsibility. Mouth set in a determined calm as he makes split-second decisions that literally mean life or death.
It is always jarring, or at least is should be jarring, to be reminded of just what human beings are capable of doing in extreme circumstances. The depths of depravity and the astonishing selflessness brought out in such times are both explored in HOTEL RWANDA. What is remarkable about the film is that it both shames and uplifts the audience in equal parts by the same events.
Your Thoughts?