Watch: Hotel Rwanda

I had originally planned to spend Saturday afternoon reading Personal Finance for Dummies, but when Rainier came home waving his DVD copy of Hotel Rwanda, I had a change of priorities.

Rwandan History 101: There are two ethnic tribes in Rwanda--the Hutu and the Tutsi. When the Belgians colonzied the country after World War I, they applied the tried-and-tested principle of "divide and conquer" and picked Tutsis to preside over the colonial government. This was because they felt that the Tutsis were the more superior of the two groups--they were supposedly taller, had fairer skin, thinner noses, etc. When the Blegians left, they aggravated the racial divide by appointing Hutu administrators.

Through the years, though, majority of Hutus and Tutsis lived in harmony, working together, living as neighbors, even inter-marrying. But some radical Hutus still felt they had to avenge their oppression, and this animosity erupted into the genocide the wracked Rwanda in the early 1990s. In just three months, over a million Hutus and Tutsis were brutallly maimed, raped and murdered, by their co-workers, neighbors, members of the Hutu militia, and Tutsi rebel forces. And the rest of the world just watched.

Hotel Rwanda is the true story of an ordinary man, Paul Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle) who helped shelter over a thousand refugees in the hotel he was managing during this time. Paul is a Hutu married to a Tutsi, and it is his love for his family that compels (and inspires) him to save everyone that he can, whether young or old, no matter what race they belong to. The whole movie shows how Paul has to keep thinking on his feet, lying, bribing, and stealing to either buy more time or save more lives. And despite insurmountable odds—from the UN peacekeeping force abandoning the country, to having guns repeatedly shoved in his face—Paul maintains a stoic dignity that few men would possess under such pressure.

Hotel Rwanda is gripping and captivating. But unlike other war movies, it does not show much of the actual killing or decapitated corpses. Instead, the gravity of the genocide is reflected subtlely but powerfully—in the catatonic faces of each new refugee that comes to the hotel, in the chilling propaganda that the Hutu militia blares from their radio station, and in the quiet despair that Paul tries to hide from his family and co-workers with every passing day

The movie speaks out against apathy, about how not doing anything might as well be as if you are contributing to the problem yourself. In the first part of the movie, for example, Paul refuses to help a Tutsi neighbor who is taken away by the Hutu police because he does not want to get involved. And then there is the apathy from the rest of the world, and how this allowed the genocide to last for months. The one line in the movie that struck me most came from a European journalist who was able to shoot footage of the carnage. When Paul comes to thank him for exposing the genocide to the rest of the world, the journalist sadly tells him that he doubts the world will come to their aid. "I think if people see this footage, they'll say 'Oh, my God, that's horrible.' And then they'll go on eating their dinners." How many times have we did these ourselves while we watched CNN?

I think for every Star Wars that we all watch, we also have to make it a point to also watch movies like Hotel Rwanda. Because in real life, the guy doesn't always get the girl, the good guys don't always win, and not all families live happily ever after. These are the things that we have to keep reminding ourselves of.