More than 800,000 Rwandans were systematically killed over the summer of 1994, most of them Tutsi and pro-peace Hutu. This film is about the experiences of a young man, Hugh Dancy, serving as an intern at a technical school in Rwanda. The school, encapsulated in fences, is run by a Catholic priest, John Hurt, and serves as a temporary base for a UN military contingent, led by the rigid Belgian colonel Dominique Horwitz.
What we witness is the increasing pressure of rag tag "militias" outside the fence on the mostly Tutsi students and staff at the school. The assassination of the Hutu president is blamed by the radio and newspapers on militant Tutsi. Even a sensible young Hutu, an aide to Hurt, comes to believe the prevalent interpretation of events. Hate fills the air. Americans should be familiar with this sort of thing by now.
The Tutsi refugees flood the school grounds, justifiably terrified. The militia outside are cheerfully hacking people to death with machetes, including women holding babies. Ten Belgian UN soldiers are murdered. No one is safe. The tension grows so great that the Catholic priest twice uses a word we don't often associate with Catholic priests. In my opinion, it's a better movie that the similar and highly lauded "Hotel Rwanda." I'll just add a couple of observations.
The usual format for a story like this is that it's told through the eyes of heroic whites who come to the aid of Africans or African-Americans. You'll find that template here. I didn't find it condescending or offensive. The African performers have plenty of screen time in important parts, the whites don't succeed in saving the blacks, and this is a movie about a small part of the tribal warfare, a kind of microcosm of the whole. It could have been about the political situation instead of the effects of the killing on a single community, but that would have been a different and far more complicated film.
There are dead bodies in abundance and pools of blood but they aren't trivialized by being made more shocking than they need to be. Nobody's head rolls across the floor. The violence is almost all in medium shot and partially hidden by objects or shrubbery.
We see the militias angrily attacking their victims and at the same time cheering and, inevitably, some of the street riots in American cities come to mind. But any such comparison is unjust. The violence in Rwanda was wholesale and deadly, leading to the deaths of about 20% of the population. Besides, there is little reason to feel superior on racial grounds. A good deal of footage exists of white people dutifully wiping out other white people on ethnic grounds.
The role of the media isn't really made clear enough in the film. The role of the media is often underplayed in the interpretation of historical events. As Will Rogers said, "All I know is what I read in the newspaper." But, again, the focus of the film is not on explanations but on consequences. The consequences are so clearly tragic that we really don't need the lugubrious sound track to cue us about our emotions.
The international community was caught unprepared and uncertain whether to interfere and, if to interfere, how to do it? If we don't intervene, what do we wind up with -- white guilt? The United States was particularly recalcitrant. The memory of our humanitarian efforts in Somalia was all too vivid. The use of the word "genocide" was prohibited by spokesmen in Washington, long after it became clear that that was precisely what was taking place. See, if you acknowledge that what's going on is actually "genocide", how can you possibly justify inaction? It's a tragic story and a saddening one, but not a cheap one. It doesn't cast the Hutu as benighted savages and the Tutsi as heroic self-sacrificing heroes.
In a way, that's the central problem with the events we're shown. There were so few heroes.
What we witness is the increasing pressure of rag tag "militias" outside the fence on the mostly Tutsi students and staff at the school. The assassination of the Hutu president is blamed by the radio and newspapers on militant Tutsi. Even a sensible young Hutu, an aide to Hurt, comes to believe the prevalent interpretation of events. Hate fills the air. Americans should be familiar with this sort of thing by now.
The Tutsi refugees flood the school grounds, justifiably terrified. The militia outside are cheerfully hacking people to death with machetes, including women holding babies. Ten Belgian UN soldiers are murdered. No one is safe. The tension grows so great that the Catholic priest twice uses a word we don't often associate with Catholic priests. In my opinion, it's a better movie that the similar and highly lauded "Hotel Rwanda." I'll just add a couple of observations.
The usual format for a story like this is that it's told through the eyes of heroic whites who come to the aid of Africans or African-Americans. You'll find that template here. I didn't find it condescending or offensive. The African performers have plenty of screen time in important parts, the whites don't succeed in saving the blacks, and this is a movie about a small part of the tribal warfare, a kind of microcosm of the whole. It could have been about the political situation instead of the effects of the killing on a single community, but that would have been a different and far more complicated film.
There are dead bodies in abundance and pools of blood but they aren't trivialized by being made more shocking than they need to be. Nobody's head rolls across the floor. The violence is almost all in medium shot and partially hidden by objects or shrubbery.
We see the militias angrily attacking their victims and at the same time cheering and, inevitably, some of the street riots in American cities come to mind. But any such comparison is unjust. The violence in Rwanda was wholesale and deadly, leading to the deaths of about 20% of the population. Besides, there is little reason to feel superior on racial grounds. A good deal of footage exists of white people dutifully wiping out other white people on ethnic grounds.
The role of the media isn't really made clear enough in the film. The role of the media is often underplayed in the interpretation of historical events. As Will Rogers said, "All I know is what I read in the newspaper." But, again, the focus of the film is not on explanations but on consequences. The consequences are so clearly tragic that we really don't need the lugubrious sound track to cue us about our emotions.
The international community was caught unprepared and uncertain whether to interfere and, if to interfere, how to do it? If we don't intervene, what do we wind up with -- white guilt? The United States was particularly recalcitrant. The memory of our humanitarian efforts in Somalia was all too vivid. The use of the word "genocide" was prohibited by spokesmen in Washington, long after it became clear that that was precisely what was taking place. See, if you acknowledge that what's going on is actually "genocide", how can you possibly justify inaction? It's a tragic story and a saddening one, but not a cheap one. It doesn't cast the Hutu as benighted savages and the Tutsi as heroic self-sacrificing heroes.
In a way, that's the central problem with the events we're shown. There were so few heroes.