Hotel Rwanda
Viewing
The
movie was decent. Not my favorite, but Hotel Rwanda
does just fine for a movie.
The movie is based on
the true story of Paul Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle), his
family, and
how they escape Rwanda. Paul is your average businessman. He works in a
lavish
hotel in Rwanda. Life was good for him; he had a great family and good
ties.
But there is always a nice little catch. Rwanda is in the middle of a bloody civil war. As I said previously in the last note card:
The families of
Rwanda
suffer from internal conflict of the civil war. They are always being
arrested
for this witch-hunt for being rebel spies and driven out of their
homes. The
Tutsi and the Hutu are constantly fighting. The thing is, the people in
Rwanda
all are the same people. The Belgium people messed everything up during
World
War II by separating the people by skin tone and nose width. They put
the Tutsi
in charge when they took over Rwanda. But the Belgium people pulled,
the Hutu
took over. Now, Tutsi and the Hutu are even killing each other to claim
the
land for themselves. Even the Hutu are killing Tutsi children to wipe
out the
generation.
Even one of the
Rusesabaginas’ neighbors is arrested for being accused of spying. It
seems well
at first when the president signs a peace agreement with the Tutsis but
then he
murdered.
One thing I have noticed
that is similar to Orwell’s novel, 1984, is the radio and the
telescreen. The DJ on the station is Hutu and he is pushing the other
Hutus to
crush and kill the Tutsis. I hated the DJ so much that I wished death
upon him.
Paul tries to help his
family and the other Tutsi refugees by sheltering them in the hotel
when
everyone else leaves. Things are so bad in Rwanda that even the UN
pulls out
everyone. Paul feels betrayed by this because Nick Nolte’s character
tells him
he black.
The movie has it
positive and negative points in it. I’ll start with the negative first.
Paul
and the Tutsis get left behind many times by the UN. (A true-life fact
about
the movie: They wouldn’t take the Tutsi orphans but a dog got to go on
the
bus!) Tatiana, Paul’s wife, loses her brother and sister-in-law. A
fellow Hutu
soldier that helps Paul tries to back on him twice. When the UN tries
to help
the Tutsis escape, the DJ tells everyone to the “cockroaches”. The UN
vehicles
are attacked but they escape scared and somewhat harmed. The water gets
shut
off so the refugees use the pool.
Now that we’ve the
negative points, let’s look at the positive points in the movie.
Everyone
finally gets rescued. When Paul that he lost his family, he had found
them
alive and hiding. The family goes to the refugee camp and finds their
nieces.
Paul and his family end up adopting them.
