Post by Capo on Dec 7, 2005 21:46:35 GMT
Hotel Rwanda
Director: Terry George
2004 USA
Kigali, Rwanda, 1994. Contrary to the plans of the UN and the peace talks being devised, almost a million Tutsis are about to be massacred by Hutu rebels, who have overthrown the President and want to wipe out their “tall tree” counterparts indefinitely. Paul Rusesabagina was a Hutu, and manager of the five-star Hotel Mille Collines, and during the genocide, he and his wife sheltered over a thousand Tutsis from the Hutu militia, putting his and his family’s lives at dear risk.
Whether embracing it or condemning it, Hollywood has never really questioned war. Saving Private Ryan (1998) showed its troop (rightfully) as heroes, but never condemned the events they were caught up in; Apocalypse Now (1979), often regarded as the best war movie of all time, was not so much about war itself as the journey to the heart of darkness of man’s soul; The Deer Hunter (1978) and Platoon (1986) showed the effects of war without even attempting to question America’s involvement in Vietnam in the first place.
In tackling the issue of the Rwandan genocide, Terry George has embarked on a project whose nature has rarely been successfully achieved. For it would have been impossible to make this film effectively without questioning the lack of intervention from the West at the time, and as to why the genocide was allowed to happen. While Hotel Rwanda’s aims at enlightening the modern world to the atrocities we have let happen work on one level, it fails at least on another.
Certainly, the film has effective moments. George captures a genuine sense of panic and an irrational aside to the course of events, which make the vibrant African music at the opening credits ironic if not ill-used. Nick Nolte’s UN soldier is suitably helpless and frustrated at the same time as he tries in vain to do something for the ever-decreasing Tutsis. In the later scenes, in which he finally manages to get his gun out, but insists on no shooting, we too share his frustration, an emotion perhaps best summed up by his statement on the UN’s policies; they’re there to “keep peace, not make it.” In one of the film’s most emotionally drenched (pun intended) scenes, Nolte is horrified in having to force Westerners onto a bus to take them home. Incidentally, this same scene sees an end to the most interesting and neglected character in the film, Joaquin Phoenix’s television journalist.
But the film’s problems come not in the form of unanswerable questions regarding the lack of intervention in Rwanda as opposed to Vietnam, Iraq and the like, but in the predictability in the triumph-over-adversity trajectory. Based on a true story the film may well be, but the coda is in general an unsuitably uplifting one. During the film, our emotions are manipulated necessarily as we watch this massacre unfold, but by the end, it has simply gone through too many turns of the hope-and-despair extremes. This would perhaps be justified if Rwanda ended on a bleaker note (the closing summary of the film tells how Rusesabagina and family are now living in Europe), but as it is, George seems to have ignored a golden opportunity to confront any wider social message as to the tragic genocide still happening in Africa.
The BBFC’s 12A certificate should be an indication as to the nature of the film: perhaps it is intended for tomorrow’s generation. This would explain why the imagery in the film isn’t quite as shocking or powerful as it perhaps could have been. It would also go to some lengths (though by no means satisfactory ones) to justify the film’s abundance of light-hearted moments, which distract us from the overall tone, such as when Paul has prepared a candle-lit dinner with his wife atop the hotel, teasing her for a rewarding kiss, with nothing but gunshots heard behind them (in another film, they might have been celebratory fireworks).
Cheadle is the saving grace, and makes the clichés more than watchable. Two key scenes have stick out: the one in which he discovers thousands of corpses in a ditch his jeep has detoured into; and in the following scene, his confused mind causes him to laugh at a mistake in tying his tie, only to overwhelm himself with tears moments after. And, thankfully, his African accent is considerably superior to his Ocean’s Eleven (2002) attempt at cockney.
CREDITS
Director
Terry George
Producers
Terry George
A. Kitman Ho
Screenplay
Keir Pearson
Terry George
Director of Photography
Robert Fraisse
Film Editing
Naomi Geraghty
Original Score
Rupert Gregson-Williams
Andrea Guerra
Martin Russell
CAST
Don Cheadle
Paul Rusesabagina
Sophie Okonedo
Tatiana Rusesabagina
Nick Nolte
Colonel Oliver
Joaquin Phoenix
Jack Daglish
Director: Terry George
2004 USA
Kigali, Rwanda, 1994. Contrary to the plans of the UN and the peace talks being devised, almost a million Tutsis are about to be massacred by Hutu rebels, who have overthrown the President and want to wipe out their “tall tree” counterparts indefinitely. Paul Rusesabagina was a Hutu, and manager of the five-star Hotel Mille Collines, and during the genocide, he and his wife sheltered over a thousand Tutsis from the Hutu militia, putting his and his family’s lives at dear risk.
Whether embracing it or condemning it, Hollywood has never really questioned war. Saving Private Ryan (1998) showed its troop (rightfully) as heroes, but never condemned the events they were caught up in; Apocalypse Now (1979), often regarded as the best war movie of all time, was not so much about war itself as the journey to the heart of darkness of man’s soul; The Deer Hunter (1978) and Platoon (1986) showed the effects of war without even attempting to question America’s involvement in Vietnam in the first place.
In tackling the issue of the Rwandan genocide, Terry George has embarked on a project whose nature has rarely been successfully achieved. For it would have been impossible to make this film effectively without questioning the lack of intervention from the West at the time, and as to why the genocide was allowed to happen. While Hotel Rwanda’s aims at enlightening the modern world to the atrocities we have let happen work on one level, it fails at least on another.
Certainly, the film has effective moments. George captures a genuine sense of panic and an irrational aside to the course of events, which make the vibrant African music at the opening credits ironic if not ill-used. Nick Nolte’s UN soldier is suitably helpless and frustrated at the same time as he tries in vain to do something for the ever-decreasing Tutsis. In the later scenes, in which he finally manages to get his gun out, but insists on no shooting, we too share his frustration, an emotion perhaps best summed up by his statement on the UN’s policies; they’re there to “keep peace, not make it.” In one of the film’s most emotionally drenched (pun intended) scenes, Nolte is horrified in having to force Westerners onto a bus to take them home. Incidentally, this same scene sees an end to the most interesting and neglected character in the film, Joaquin Phoenix’s television journalist.
But the film’s problems come not in the form of unanswerable questions regarding the lack of intervention in Rwanda as opposed to Vietnam, Iraq and the like, but in the predictability in the triumph-over-adversity trajectory. Based on a true story the film may well be, but the coda is in general an unsuitably uplifting one. During the film, our emotions are manipulated necessarily as we watch this massacre unfold, but by the end, it has simply gone through too many turns of the hope-and-despair extremes. This would perhaps be justified if Rwanda ended on a bleaker note (the closing summary of the film tells how Rusesabagina and family are now living in Europe), but as it is, George seems to have ignored a golden opportunity to confront any wider social message as to the tragic genocide still happening in Africa.
The BBFC’s 12A certificate should be an indication as to the nature of the film: perhaps it is intended for tomorrow’s generation. This would explain why the imagery in the film isn’t quite as shocking or powerful as it perhaps could have been. It would also go to some lengths (though by no means satisfactory ones) to justify the film’s abundance of light-hearted moments, which distract us from the overall tone, such as when Paul has prepared a candle-lit dinner with his wife atop the hotel, teasing her for a rewarding kiss, with nothing but gunshots heard behind them (in another film, they might have been celebratory fireworks).
Cheadle is the saving grace, and makes the clichés more than watchable. Two key scenes have stick out: the one in which he discovers thousands of corpses in a ditch his jeep has detoured into; and in the following scene, his confused mind causes him to laugh at a mistake in tying his tie, only to overwhelm himself with tears moments after. And, thankfully, his African accent is considerably superior to his Ocean’s Eleven (2002) attempt at cockney.
CREDITS
Director
Terry George
Producers
Terry George
A. Kitman Ho
Screenplay
Keir Pearson
Terry George
Director of Photography
Robert Fraisse
Film Editing
Naomi Geraghty
Original Score
Rupert Gregson-Williams
Andrea Guerra
Martin Russell
CAST
Don Cheadle
Paul Rusesabagina
Sophie Okonedo
Tatiana Rusesabagina
Nick Nolte
Colonel Oliver
Joaquin Phoenix
Jack Daglish