Hotel Rwanda

I was vaguely aware of this movie when it came out last year, but since we had an infant, I had no hope of seeing it. (The one movie we saw together Ben’s first year was Million Dollar Baby, which, despite the lovely training montages, was not worth the trouble.) Now that Hotel Rwanda is on DVD, though, it’s much easier for the babysitter-challenged among us to see it.

The movie tells the real-life story of Paul Rusesabagina, the Hutu hotel manager who helped save the lives of over 1,000 Tutsis. It is one of the few positive stories to emerge from the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

The filmmakers focus on Paul and his love for his wife. The genocide is shown in flashes of violence, but for the most part the action takes place inside the hotel. Even so, the brief scenes of people being murdered or corpses littering the streets can be hard to stomach. That’s the strength of cinema: showing us compelling images that affect us in a visceral way.

I can’t judge the accuracy of this film because, like most Americans, I know little about the events in Rwanda in 1994. It’s also hard for me to judge a film like this on its artistic merits because the horrific story makes it nearly impossible to pull back intellectually to a sufficient distance. Based on the amazon.com reviews of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, this movie prompted many people to seek further information about the history of Rwanda, and it’s valuable for that reason alone.

The DVD has some worthwhile extras, including a making-of documentary and a documentary about Paul’s return to Rwanda. (I would have loved a short piece about Rwanda today, but maybe that’s asking too much.) I also appreciated watching the movie on DVD because I could pause in the middle to collect myself. For anyone who missed seeing this movie in the theatre, I highly recommend it on DVD.

Don Cheadle, the Oscar-nominated lead actor, was in the paper today because he recently visited the original hotel for the first time. Cheadle and Rusesabagina have both continued to raise awareness about conflicts in Africa; now they are focusing on the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.