Hotel Rwanda

 By Ephraim Belnap

    Pretty good. It's a kind of Schindler's List-type film about the Rwandan Genocide, and it works pretty well. It came out in 2004, got the lead nominated for an Oscar, and is one of the only big depictions of the genocide. I thought it was going to be rated R and was pretty ticked when I found out it was PG-13. This is hardly a PG-13 event. And if the film can't show most of what it's about, what's it going to be about!? The rating feels like a concession to get the film made; something to reassure producers that it'd turn a profit. But the problem is that nothing could be more compelling than the realities of the genocide, so a film that can't really show it feels like it's pulling its punches for no particular reason. Schindler's List was rated R. Why do you have to stop your imitation there?

    One film that did this well was Blood Diamond. It's also a Hollywood film about violent African conflicts in the '90's. But it works so much better because its R rating makes a definitely Hollywood-tailored film at least feel authentic in its individual moments. Of course the mercenary is dropping F-bombs and people are getting their hands chopped off! Rwanda can only show its violence in a handful of moments, whereas Diamond can scatter it throughout the story. And unsurprisingly, those handful of moments are the most memorable ones in the film, whereas the moments that drag most are whenever the heroes are gesticulating about the latest resource crisis when we've already seen this three times. 

    But with that all said, it's a good film! 

    It's based on a true story whose complexities I don't have time to get into. But essentially, in 1994 years of racial tension boiled over into an extensive attempted genocide, and around 700,000 Tutsi people - one of the two racial groups in Rwanda - were killed violently, mostly by the machetes ubiquitous to the nation. Hotel Rwanda is a film about a hotel manager who sheltered a lot of Tutsi refugees in his hotel (the Hotel des Mille Collines) for the duration of the genocide at great personal risk. Like Schindler's List, it's a good story for a film because the protagonist isn't an overt action hero and has to talk his way out of most violence. It's both relatable, and peace-endorsing, decidedly separate from the action hero genre. And it's basically true, although the truth is more complicated. Don Cheadle got an Oscar nomination for this and a lot of other awards too. 

    Its PG-13 rating actually kind of helps, because it's more widely watchable and easier to talk about. I wouldn't call it a family film, but there sure are a lot of moments where Cheadle's character - Paul Rusesabagina - hugs his family and tells them how much he loves them. A lot of characters are good with kids, a lot of people get saved, but there's an appropriate amount of despair and sadness as well. Like I said, it can feel very Hollywood-ized, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Four out of Five