Hotel Rwanda (2004) (Canada/UK/Italy/S Africa)

[hengcs]

The official website is here
http://www.hotelrwanda.com

What is good?
-- The song "Million Voices". It appears very timely in the movie too.
-- The performance by Don was very good.
-- The movie is well filmed, BUT part of the credit should also go to the historical story which is by itself very compelling.

However ...
-- I do NOT like the way the movie portrays the UN Colonel (kind of negative, in my humble opinion). I think MORE COMPLEXITY in his character should be depicted.
-- The movie is not consistently high key throughout, there are times of low key ...

In sum, go watch!

[Chris Knipp]

Good points as usual, hengcs. Cheadle's restraint and strength has been universally praised. The film -- the subject as you say -- is powerful stuff but the treatment (necessarily? maybe) quite conventional. Nick Nolte as the UN officer indeed not subtle (not necessary Nolte's fault but the way it was written). Hope to post and read other more detailed comments on this later.

[oscar jubis]

Feel like Oscar the Grouch writing this post. I've been waiting 10 years for a film depicting the Rwandan holocaust and all I got was a date movie for middlebrows. I have to admit I'd feel better if I had taken the kids_Hotel Rwanda is quite appropriate for 5th graders. I'll probably end up listing it under Honorable Mention for the simple fact that this story had to be told and they didn't invent a white hero (Mississippi Burning). Cheadle got a nomination for getting the accent right for the whole movie. How can one not be moved, but imagine the film a director with a personal stamp and a producer with guts would put out.

[Chris Knipp]

I think the events as witnessed through the movie are horrific nonetheless, and to say Cheadle got the nomination simply for getting the accent right throughout the movie is rather mean, as you yourself admit.

I might add that I saw this with a 14-year-old boy, a youthful film buff who's rather particular. His comment: "it was okay."

It is quite possible that a really original director would have found a more peculiar angle and would have focused less on the actual events, even indirectly; he or she wouldn't want to give us something as literal and documentary as Hotel Rwanda. You don't really want to see the 900,000 people hacked to death, do you? Obviously this was left out, or only glimpsed, but you know it's there. The treatment was somewhat like the Holocaust in Polanski's The Pianist. However, it may be that the main character isn't as interesting as Wladyslaw Szpilman, though Paul Rusesabagina did a lot more than Szpilman did to save human beings.

We have heard about the banality of evil from Hannah Arendt. Hotel Rwanda tells us something about the banality of goodness.

[JustaFied]

I saw this film recently, and it simply wiped me out. My appetite was gone. Maybe it's just that the subject matter, genocide, is truly so incomprehensible to the world most of us live in. Same reaction I had I guess to The Killing Fields and Schindler's List. And to think that these same sorts of events are going on today in Sudan. It's simply horrific. Maybe I sound like a "middlebrow", I'd like to think it means I'm human. How specifically could these events have been portrayed more effectively or appropriately in a film? This was a film in which I looked past the technical merits of the film itself and just got absorbed into the story.

Also, I'm somewhat perplexed by the expression "banality of goodness". What was so banal about what took place? Was it the pacing of the film that couldn't hold your attention?

[oscar jubis]

The Killing Fields and Schindler's List are much better films. To avoid repeating myself, here's a link to one of several reviews that reflect my take on Hotel Rwanda:
www.villagevoice.com/film/0451,atkinson2,59419,20.html

[hengcs]

Nothing personal, so do not take offense ...

I also think Schindler's List and The Killing Fields are much better ...
(or maybe because I was younger and more impressionable then?! hee hee)
(or maybe because I watched much fewer movies then ... hee hee ... I wasn't working then ... and I would not spend my allowances/savings or my parents' money on movies)

Scenes I like from Hotel Rwanda
-- The scene where he was on the bus, and suddenly the song sounded and you see mass of people flooding in ...
-- The scene where his family was escaping, and you sense impending danger ... would he live and his family die?
-- The scene where they abused the women (without depicting explicitly)

I have also just watched Sometimes in April (see a few posts down).
http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1247&highlight=sometimes+in+april

It is about the same event ... I will share my review soon ...
;)

[arsaib4]

Well, the USA Today critic did call it the "African version of "Schindler's List." More reviews available here (http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/hotelrwanda).

[Chris Knipp]

What I meant by "The banality of goodness" is that there is nothing particular heroic (in style, in manner) or charismatic about Cheadle's character in Hotel Rwanda, and that going good in fact probably most of the time is not so much a matter of dramatic gestures with great flourishes but of doing the necessary things at the right times, having the patience and the courage to do what you can do. You can have saints right next door and not notice, just as you can have mass murderers next door and everybody will say "he was such a nice fellow, he never had a disagreeable word." Good and evil are not all on the surface. Again I appeal to my great favorite among the world's films, Ikiru, where we find that Watanabe's nobility eluded many of the people around him during his last months of life. You could say also that Watanabe's goodness was "banal."

[JustaFied]

I don't have the energy to debate the merits of this film right now. I understand what you mean now, Chris, with the term "banality of goodness", and that's an excellent description. It's one of the reasons why I liked the film. Sometimes you just do what's right instead of "Doing the Right Thing". One can act morally without being self-righteous about it or seeking out self-glorification in the process.