By Jeff Tamarkin

for Global Rhythm Magazine 2005

When the subject is death, we are numbed by numbers: 3,000 on 9/11, more than 200,000 in the December tsunamis. We editorialize on the horror and do our best to display our sympathies, to make things right. Yet during a period of approximately 100 days in 1994, an estimated one million people in the small central African nation of Rwanda-one million!-were brutally slaughtered, and few in the West knew or cared much about it. The most blatant and brutal episode of genocide since Nazi Germany barely rated a blip in our media, and the United States-this occurred under Clinton's watch-and the rest of the world basically shrugged and turned its back.

The massacres were not the handiwork of outsiders but the result of centuries-old hostilities between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes that comprise the bulk of Rwanda's population. The Hutus, although significantly vaster in number (approximately 85 percent), had long been deemed the lesser of the two peoples by the governing Tutsi royal family and the Belgians, who had controlled Rwanda since the end of World War II.
The Belgians kowtowed to the ruling Tutsis, and although the majority of Tutsis were themselves poor peasants who bore no ill will toward the Hutus (just as most Hutus had no problem with the Tutsis), resentment built among some vengeful Hutus. Following Rwanda's independence from Belgium in 1961, the position of the Hutus began to improve, and a rebel faction developed, expanding over the next few decades.

Finally, on April 6, 1994, all hell broke loose: Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana was killed in a plane crash attributed to Hutu extremists angered by his recent peace proposals toward the Tutsi minority. That very night, Hutu militiamen began killing Tutsis indiscriminately, often using clubs and machetes. They also chopped down any moderate Hutu who sheltered or even sympathized with the Tutsis. Determined to entirely eliminate the Tutsis, whose own advantageous position in the past had been responsible for no shortage of Hutu death and grief, this growing army of Hutu insurgents was exceedingly merciless: children, women, all were marked for extermination. So rampant was the killing fever that neighbors murdered neighbors in their homes, churches, schools, on the streets-no place was safe.

One Hutu, Paul Rusesabagina, the middle-class house manager of a posh, upscale hotel largely catering to wealthy white tourists, not only couldn't fathom why such utter hatred was directed toward the Tutsis, he was married to one.

Terry George's Hotel Rwanda is Rusesabagina's story, a disturbing, harrowing, but ultimately uplifting account of how one man refused to give in. Don Cheadle's Rusesabagina isn't a superman; he's just someone who knows how best to use what's at his disposal, be it bribery, diplomacy or merely the gut instinct that comes from being a successful multitasker. Drawing on his connections, his craftiness and his willpower, the resourceful and unflappable Rusesabagina ultimately spared the lives of some 1,200 Tutsis by harboring them in the hotel-since abandoned by all but its black staff-repeatedly ducking death and numerous threats to his family and his grateful new guests.

But Hotel Rwanda is more than just an African Schindler's List. It's meant to open our eyes. Rusesabagina-who survived and consulted on the film-was not a hero type by nature. He did not ask to be cast as a savior. He was simply a good man who knew right from wrong, and with assistance from Western superpowers nowhere in sight, he took it upon himself to do what had to be done.

The four-star, Belgian-owned Hotel Des Milles Collines, in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali, is Rusesabagina's domain. He knows what goes on under its roof, he knows how to make the place hum smoothly. Long practiced in the art of keeping the people satisfied, he's not much of a hustler but he knows when it's prudent to pay off a rebel general who wants him to shoot his own wife, Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo); when a bottle of premium scotch will buy him a favor; when a phone call to a higher-up will save lives. Whether fending off rebels at the hotel door or securing food for the refugees, Rusesabagina is the consummate get-it-done-at-any-cost guy.

But he also knows that he and those who need his protection are on their own. A well-meaning but essentially powerless U.N. peacekeeper, Col. Oliver (Nick Nolte), claims he is "overwhelmed" and can do little to keep the peace, but the more Rusesabagina ventures beyond the hotel gates, the more apparent it becomes that time is of the essence. In one of the film's most heart-stopping scenes, Rusesabagina, on a supply run, is directed down a foggy, bumpy road, only to discover that the bumps causing his Jeep to wobble are hundreds of human corpses. Only then does he finally lose it.

Cheadle doesn't play Rusesabagina as a Rambo character. He didn't set out to harbor the hunted; they came to him. He is strong but he, too, is fearful. Yet being the ace manager that he is, a student of the human condition, he is capable of attending to details while keeping his eye on the larger picture, understanding that any decision he makes might be the wrong one. When his family is among the few granted exit visas from the country, Rusesabagina makes a split-second decision to stay behind, causing his wife and children no dearth of anger and pain. He soon learns that the departing party is in grave danger, and this time their salvation is out of his hands. Sometimes, he knows, it is only circumstance that twists fate.

Depicting large-scale human tragedy on film in a manner that will sell popcorn is not an easy undertaking, and Hotel Rwanda is not for the squeamish. While the level of violence is substantially less than that offered by the average martial arts or slasher film, it is what is implied that gets to us here. We know that these events were real, that this massive murder campaign took place in our own recent past, and that it was under-reported at the time, as if none of this really mattered. The biggest news in America during the week that the genocide began in April 1994 wasn't Rwanda, but rather the suicide of Kurt Cobain, leader of the rock band Nirvana.

Hotel Rwanda wisely maintains its balance between the plight of Rusesabagina and Tatiana to keep their family out of harm's way and the greater story of a society gone mad. At once it's a story that hits home-what would you do in their position?-and one so unfathomable in its telling of human suffering and heartlessness that it's out of our reach as we watch it unfold. It's a story that needed to be told, and its telling is a triumph.

Excellent (four stars)
Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images and brief strong language.
In English