First I would like to begin by stating that I was so impressed with the film Hotel Rwanda that if it were up to me…I would leave it completely alone! In my opinion, Don Cheadle’s portrayal of Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager of the Belgian Hotel des Mille Collines, was immaculate!! Although I’ve seen this movie several times before, I still get chills watching Paul convince Tatiana to jump off the roof with the children, if and when the interahamwe attack. In a later scene, the chills kept coming, as Paul raced through the Hotel searching for his family, praying that they had not yet jumped, only to find them huddled together in the shower. Thank God! Scenes similar in intensity to the aforementioned are too numerous to count.
I also have to sing the praises of Philip Gourevitch’s book, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Gourevitch coupled chilling first hand accounts of the genocide with informative political background information. His book provided the reader with poignant stories from actual victims but went a step further by offering an explanation as to how the international community, as well as, the Rwandan community could permit such atrocities to occur.
If I absolutely had to make a change to the film Hotel Rwanda based on my readings from the book, I would make the French presence more overt. The French were referred to several times in the film (one of the Belgian officials in charge of the hotel made a call to the French President and was able to stop a military attack on the hotel), but overall, I feel the French escaped relatively unscathed. I’m almost ashamed to admit this, but it was not until I read Gourevitch’s book, that I realized the culpability of the French in this matter. I had never heard of Operation Turquoise before. A disenchanted French soldier was quoted as saying the following about Operation Turquoise, “We have been deceived. This is not what we were led to believe. We were told that Tutsis were killing Hutus. We thought the Hutus were the good guys and the victims.” (Gourevitch, 160) Gourevitch concludes that when all was said and done, Operation Turquoise was beneficial only to the genocidaires. “ The signal achievement of Operation Turquoise was to permit the slaughter of Tutsis to continue for an extra month, and to secure a safe passage for the genocidal command to cross, with a lot of its weaponry, into Zaire.” (Gourevitch, 161)
Speaking of the safe passage…in my opinion, once the movie ends, it appears as if the genocide ends with the film. I guess on some level I realized that once something as horrific as a genocide occurs, a nation … better yet, the people who compromise that nation, cannot recover overnight. It will clearly take time for those wounds to even begin to heal. However, it was not until I read this book, that I acknowledged, that there was so much more to the genocide than just what occurred in 1994 with the mass killings of the Tutsi. Rwanda now had to deal with backlash killings of Hutus, and then the war with Zaire, and then the rebuilding process…my goodness!
One of the most difficult passages in the book dealt with the rebuilding of Rwanda. I remember reading about a woman who has to live next door to a man that killed her entire family…how does one do that?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
"I remember reading about a woman who has to live next door to a man that killed her entire family…how does one do that?"
I have the same question. Even though I haven't had a chance yet to read this book, about a year ago, I discovered, "Left to Tell" by Immaculee Ilibagiza. I saw her on PBS during a Dr. Wayne Dyer presentation. The woman is amazing. She (a 22-year old Tutsi college student at the time) and seven others hid for 91 days in a tiny bathroom of their pastor, with almost nothing to eat and having to listen as the house was ransaked time and time again, while the Hutus frantically tried to find them. All of her family was killed but she survived "to share the story and her miraculous transition into forgiveness and a profound relationship with God." (http://www.lefttotell.com/about/index.php)
If I can find the time, I'll post information about in on my blog.
Interesting comments. The French and the Belgians should have been made more obvious -- if only because they helped create the fine mess of Rwanda.
But the fact that the West turned its back on the problem was worth more mention, too...
Thank you for writing about the aftermath of the genocide. I cannot imagine how one would go about trying to put one's life back together again in that place, remembering everywhere you turn, the horrendous events that took place. How do you ever learn to trust again?
I enjoyed reading your post. I agree about including a little more about the involvement of the French and the role they played. I think the movie assumed the viewer had a basic knowledge of what was going on in the broader context. I'm not so sure the average American did. It's unfortunate, but true.
The only time we could really laugh was at that shower scene -- what would she have been able to do with it? Maybe we laughed because of the relief after the buildup of fear and tension.
There was nothing in the book that made me laugh.
Post a Comment