My Take on the Movies
A Mini-Review of
HOTEL RWANDA
By: A. L. “Toni” Anderson

This evening I went to Berkeley to see the new movie Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle (whom I fondly recall as "Mouse" in Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress). As I suspected, "limited engagement" means "not in Oakland." Perhaps it is assumed that inner city dwellers cannot be interested in such things.

The movie is based upon the true-life story of Paul Rusesabagina, the Hutu manager of a Belgian hotel in Rwanda at the time when the Europeans were de-colonizing the country. After apparently setting up divisions between the Rwandans who had been designated as "Hutu" (field slaves) and those designated "Tutsi" (house slaves), the Europeans eventually went home, leaving the Hutu in charge. The results were predictable. [Notice any parallels closer to home?]

The resident UN forces (headed in the movie by Nick Nolte of Prince of Tides fame) did nothing to stop the bloodshed of more than one million Africans and the attempted extermination of the Tutsis.

The film was excellently acted, and is an extreme consciousness-raising experience. I highly recommend it.

[© 01/10/2005]