Hotel Rwanda

Just saw Hotel Rwanda tonight. I wish I'd seen it before the last night so I could tell everyone to go see it, but I'll post a reminder when I see it out on video. The movie is not a documentary, and not an emotionless account of the historical events of the Rwandan genocide, it's the story of one man, a hotel manager, doing exactly what hotel managers do but instead of flattering powerful and wealthy guests, he is greasing wheels and calling in favours in order to protect gues new guests, 1200 Tutsi refugees who by chance came through the hotel's gates.

Apparentely it's based on a true story, and in my mind the best way to understand an event is to look at individual heroes and actors who lived through it.

The movie cleverly used foreigners unfamiliar with the country, a couple of reporters and a colonel based on Canadian general Romeo Dallaire, who's questions helped flesh out the situation for the audience without being heavy-handed.

One of the reporter characters had a line that gave me the chills: “People are going to look at the TV and say 'Oh my god, that's terrible' and go back to eating their dinner.”