HLJ's Movie Blog

Hotel Rwanda

You don’t need to see people hacked apart in Hotel Rwanda to be horrified. It was enough to see the box of machetes spill on to the floor and to see them being carried by the Hutu militia as they marched down the street. You don’t need to see the tires of the van rolling over the dead bodies. It was enough to see the van lurch as it drove over them and then see them strewn across the road in front of and behind it when it stopped. The horror shows in Tatiana’s eyes as the machete is held to her throat. It’s in Paul’s eyes when he looks over the roof to see if his family has jumped to their death. These are the things that make this film great.

My son and I watched Hotel Rwanda together. After the movie was finished, he said that he felt chilled. He couldn’t understand how people could commit such atrocities against one another. I couldn’t really explain it to him. Hatred isn’t easily explained. You could say that the Hutus hated the Tutsis because they were privileged by the Belgians, but is that really a sensible reason? I don’t think so, but there never is a sensible reason for that kind of madness.

I didn’t feel chilled after watching the movie, I felt ill. I’m not sure if it was the fact that nearly 1 million people were killed – most being hacked to death - or that no one did anything to stop it. The camera man summed up how the world would react to the footage of the genocide when it was televised. He said that people would be properly horrified and then go back to eating their dinners. He was right. We had already finished dinner when that line was delivered in the film. I’m not sure I could have finished eating after it was spoken. I was properly horrified, but was I horrified enough to do anything about it? Maybe writing this blog and sharing how my thoughts on the film is at least something.