 Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, and children in Hotel Rwanda (Image courtesy United Artists Films, Inc.) |
Ten years ago in Rwanda, a country with roughly the land mass of Massachusetts and a population not quite equaling New York City's, nearly one million Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus in what can only be described as genocide. The rest of the world watched from a dispassionate distance, and did nothing. A decade of hindsight makes the story no more comprehendible; if anything, it becomes even harder to wrap one's mind around both the unimaginable horror of the situation and the international community's unwillingness to intervene. The sheer number of fatalities becomes a numbing abstraction. Where to begin to understand? In such mass hysteria, how could any one person possibly hope to have an effect?
Hotel Rwanda is the story of Paul Rusesabagina, one man who managed to make a critical difference despite his somewhat modest initial intentions. Terry George's gripping film recounts Rusesabagina's heroic battle to shelter and ultimately save the lives of 1,300 Tutsi and Hutu moderates who faced certain death without his protection.
When we first meet Paul (Don Cheadle), he's comfortably ensconced as the house manager of the luxurious Belgian-owned Milles Collines Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda. He navigates the corrupt currents of greased palms and clandestine deals with practiced ease, gaining points with local generals and warlords by supplying them with hard-to-obtain Cuban cigars and 12-year-old scotch. Though he plays both sides of the fence, Paul is not a collaborator but rather a far-sighted pragmatist; he knows that the already simmering ethnic tensions are likely to boil over, so he's accruing favors in an account that he's banking on drawing from later in the service of protecting his family.
That family is the nexus of his existence and it gives the film an emotional center, using the relationship between Paul and his wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo) as a prism through which we understand how even the most politically astute could have been caught by surprise. What makes Hotel Rwanda so deeply affecting is not just the depiction of a country gone mad with bloodlust; it's also the portrait of a truly loving and mutually respectful marriage that works, held strong by the internal forces of give and take, and the threat to Paul and Tatiana's tough and tender matrimony gives the larger conflict a macrocosmic focus.
As the murderous call for "the cutting of the tall trees" is broadcast by a Hutu-run radio station, and Rusesabagina learns that no aid will be forthcoming, he can hardly believe his ears. "You're dirt," he's informed by a sympathetic UN Colonel, played by a gravelly Nick Nolte at his most dour. When the colonel expresses his disgust for the world's disregard by telling Paul "You're even lower than a nigger—that's how the world sees you," we can't help but feel implicated in his shame. Hotel Rwanda becomes a classic hero's journey as Paul is transformed reluctantly from a bystander resisting the call to become involved to a paragon of bravery and obstinate, almost reluctant, courage.
Director George scores points for avoiding the cliché of planting a noble white man at the center of the action to act as an identification figure through which an audience can assuage its collective guilt. Rather, the westerners portrayed are by turns shallow, venal, hapless, befuddled, or at best hamstrung by ineffectual policies.
By the time the murders begin, we're reminded that the basis of the conflict is an arbitrary racism leftover from Belgian colonialism. Racism depends on artificial distinctions of "otherness," and George so effectively depicts the absurdity of the Belgians' criteria for distinguishing Hutu from Tutsi that in any other context it would be laughable. The parallels to other historical outbursts of racial strife are chilling; when Hutus refer to Tutsi as cockroaches they might as well be Alabama klansmen.
The performances are uniformly excellent, but Cheadle's is surely one of the year's finest. He plays Rusesabagina with the straight-faced intensity of Gary Cooper spliced onto the "good, decent everyman" persona of Henry Fonda. The African-American actor has been known largely for his outstanding supporting work in films like Ocean's Eleven and Boogie Nights, but he's rarely been cast in the lead. That situation is likely to change now, as his work here demonstrates that with little flash or fanfare he's become one of this generation's most powerfully understated screen presences.
Hotel Rwanda may invite some comparison to Schindler's List, but makes its own indelible mark as much for its plainspoken simplicity as for its lack of flash and self-serving pretense. It doesn't presume to be the last word on Rwanda, but rather part of an ongoing dialogue that every thinking being must have with their culture, their community, and their conscience in order to know what it is to be human.
 The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (Image courtesy www.wildparrotsfilm.com) |
Parrots depicts the efforts of self-proclaimed "Dharma bum" Mark Bittner as he tends to an untamed flock of parrots living in the trees outside his San Francisco apartment. After years of drifting up various blind alleys, the former street musician accidentally found a purpose in his life, where he least expected, when he found himself tending to the flock.
As one might expect from such a tale, the narrative sometimes threatens to turn mawkish, but Irving never fully succumbs. The film becomes as much a biography of the birds themselves as of Bittner, and even when Irving lets Bittner indulge in anthropomorphizing, she has the sense to let the man himself justify the depth of his feelings.
The film takes its time shaping a general narrative arc concerning Bittner's relocation and the possible consequences to the parrots. But despite the fairly slack construction, it does manage by the end to make you care about the birds, and there are some surprisingly arresting images. If you prefer your personal spiritual transformations in a gentler form than the gut-wrenching Hotel Rwanda, you might find Parrots amiable enough to be worth the trip.