Hotel Rwanda

The epic film Hotel Rwanda is based on the 1994 massacre of almost one million people in just a few weeks, in the central African country of Rwanda. The film itself is placed at a hotel called “Hotel Des Mille Collines,” in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali. The main character is named Paul Rusesabagina, and is played by actor Don Cheadle. Essentially, the film is about how Paul, acting as the manager of this Rwandan hotel, is forced to cope with the attempted Interhamwe extermination of all the Tutsis in Rwanda. The hotel and its respective chain as a reputation for class as well as luxury, and when the fighting in Kigali breaks out, he is forced to keep the hotel from becoming a refugee camp for fleeing Tutsis. Because of the large presence of foreigners located within the hotel, either for tourism or to cover the peace accord being signed in the country, the UN has manned the gates of the hotel in order to protect it from outside threats of violence. It is under this protection that friends of Paul’s seek refuge and a safe haven.

The premise of the film is the underlying tension between the Tutsi and Hutu sects of Rwanda. These two groups came into existence several decades before when the occupying Belgians separated the population based on factors as unusual as nose length and skull size. Paper documentation then separated the population. Terry George, director of Hotel Rwanda, has authored a book by the same name. He says that the Tutsis became the ruling minority until 1959 when they were ousted from power by a Hutu revolution. Then in 1990, a large group of exiled Tutsis formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and invaded from Uganda, starting a four year war that was supposed to end with the signing of the Arusha Accords in 1994. Unfortunately, the Hutu genocide of Tutsis continued until the summer of 1994, when the RPF regained control of Rwanda, and all fighting was able to cease (94-95).

Paul Rusesabagina, manager of Des Mille Collines, has an ideal life when the film begins. Business at the hotel is fantastic, and he makes regular trips to a local war lord’s den to retrieve liqueur as well as other basic food supplies. He also arranges Cuban cigars and fresh lobster for his guests to enjoy, while enjoying the façade of a four-star luxury hotel. Paul manages to maintain good relations with the community in all of these ways, for he acts as a good Hutu while befriending influential government and military leaders. For example, he knows a Rwandan military General named Bizimungu, as well as the Canadian Colonel Oliver who is in charge of the UN peacekeeping force.

Paul’s wife and neighborhood friends, however, are Tutsi, and when all hell breaks loose in Kigali, they all come to Paul seeking shelter. There are several times during the film when Paul is forced to pay bribes of several thousand dollars in order to spare the lives of these individuals. Ultimately, the United Nations is forced to pull all intervention troops out, and abandon the Mille Collines. The phone calls and prayers of the unfortunate Rwandans still at the hotel cause enough international pressure that UN troops are forced to organize a convoy that will extradite those left behind out of the country. As the film wraps up, Paul locks up the hotel and climbs aboard a large truck that is to take the remaining 200 of about 1,000 hotel refugees across the front lines of the civil war and to safety.

Ultimately it is Paul’s courage through each of the tribulations that faces him, that keeps the guests of his hotel alive. Paul’s constant bribes and suavity are what add a tremendous amount of suspense to each scene of Hotel Rwanda, as well as sculpt the main theme. The fact that to 1,268 people, as the Hotel Rwanda screenplay reads, one man could make such an extraordinary difference, is a marvel feat to be revered with deference and admiration (George 244). Another largely emphasized theme is that of inequality. In the film, the UN peacekeeping leader Colonel Oliver tells Paul that his people, Africans, that is, are “dirt” (George 177). This allows for some of the West’s longstanding beliefs in superiority—economically, socially, and racially—to reveal themselves. These same themes are also highlighted in the readings this course has included.

One of the largest problems with the Rwandan genocide that hindsight shows, is that both Western and developed nations everywhere refused to lend support in helping to stop the mass killings taking place. Nelson Kasfir, in his article on Sudan’s Darfur, unmasks an interesting bit of irony between US policy during the Rwandan crisis and the Darfur crisis. He describes the US government as having been “negligently reticent during the Rwandan massacres in 1994,” as he triumphs over the fact that the same government has been very quick to declare “genocide” in Darfur (Developing World 115). Perhaps the US learned from its mistake in Rwanda, but that does not erase the fact that Western ignorance and superiority essentially aided in the deaths of over 800,000 innocent people. Scott Sernau agrees with my assessment when he says that “the international community was slow to respond and quick to move on to other problems” (Global Problems 212). The world did not wish to meddle in the affairs of this one, central African country. In the meantime, however, people like Paul Rusesabagina looked on with disgust as his own people were chopped and maimed to death under the blade of a machete. In the film, Paul thinks out loud as he speaks to a news correspondent who had just captured some amazing footage of a massacre taking place, when he ponders how the rest of the world could not act after they see the same footage. Besides Western superiority, however, other themes covered in our readings can be found included in the film.

Ethnicity played probably the most prominent role in causing the Rwandan conflict of 1994. Aimable Twagilimana asserts that the “codification of ethnic groups constituted a clear institutionalization of ethnicity by the European master” (The Debris of Ham 55). Two groups, the Tutsis and the Hutus, “shared the land for centuries,” as Sernau says, until the occupying Belgian force decided to split them into two, creating an ethnic split that would ultimately become the driving force behind each war that plagued Rwanda during the next 60 years (212). The Tutsis were designated, using methods as archaic as measuring nose length, as the more privileged and well-to-do division of society. Identity cards were issued, which, as the film illustrates, became the only piece of property that could keep you alive. If your ID card was stamped “Hutu,” you were allowed to pass checkpoints and retain you dignity, as well as your life. For a long time the Tutsis dominated Rwandan society, until ultimately it was the Hutu army who, in the early 1970s, embarked on a radical quest to take over the country. The basis for this fighting, and ultimately the Hutu based Interhamwe slaughter of almost a million Tutsis thirty years later, clearly was the ethnic divisions that the Belgians put in place. The film introduces this concept near the beginning, as two ladies, one Tutsi and the other Hutu, sit having drinks together. The reading for this course describes ethnic divisions as being essentially the root of all conflict in the modern world, citing the Middle East and its tendency toward Islam as a specific example of this phenomenon. However, this proved true in Rwanda as well, for the ethnic divisions already in place there are what ultimately led to the genocide of 1994 to take place.

Obviously the largest concern that the international community developed throughout the genocide was human rights. The big debate became over whether or not peoples’ human rights, per the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights, were being violated. By the time the bulk of Tutsi slaughtering had ceased, Shaharyar M. Khan says that only 3 human rights observers had made it to the country (The Shallow Graves of Rwanda 60). During the time of the genocide, Khan retained the title of Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Rwanda, and ultimately ended up lobbying for the deployment of what ultimately became almost 150 human rights observers to Rwanda. Unfortunately, these individuals came too late after the crisis to actually prevent any further killing from taking place. Throughout the film, there are numerous scenes where innocent women and children are being killed, and there is no one to help them. For expressing concern about human rights, the rest of the world was incredibly slow to act in helping the situation in Rwanda. Perhaps the strongest aspect of Third World life that the film conveys is the unfairness that the people are forced to cope with. Nobody came to their rescue in 1994 when, as the movie shows, the last thing they saw was the person next to them being hacked to death with a machete.

As a view from the Third World, this film is an excellent teaching tool. It gives insight into the life that many Third World inhabitants are forced to live with. The way that Paul gets so upset when the West essentially abandons not just his hotel and the innocent, unfortunate people therein, but his country as well, is unforgettable. In my mind, it left a lasting impression of how the West, particularly the United States, really treats Third World countries. I had never before seen such an interpretation from this point of view, and I feel that this film is truly what defines this course. I was able to obtain a view from the Third World, and it has really changed my perspective on how I view the world’s attitude toward these countries. I have resolved to begin working toward helping these countries, and I have vowed that, should I ever have the power to truly do something in a situation like that which Rwanda experienced, I would not hold back in doing so. What did happen, should never have been allowed to happen, and had the RPF Army ultimately not regained control of the capital, I shudder to think what further damage the Interhamwe and Hutu Army could have provoked.

Western dominance and superiority, ethnicity, and human rights are the three main topics that the film Hotel Rwanda aims to highlight. The main actors in the film do a remarkable job displaying each of these themes from as foreign a perspective as possible. This provides an incredibly worldly point of view on the subject matter, which is what this course has aimed to address. The film as a piece of art is quite a magnum opus. Everything from the costumes to the soundtrack is exceptionally authentic, which adds a large amount of life to the film, and makes it as realistic as can possibly be. Naturally it is a daunting task to attempt to recreate scenes of a genocide, but the entire time while watching the movie I did not think once that what I was seeing was actually a production synthesized by actors and an orderly support crew. I was shocked when the film finished, that I could feel so moved by just watching this one film. I think that my watching the film individually also added something by allowing me to focus on the implications of the film, without being distracted. I believe there are certain films that every student who takes Views from the Third World should watch, and this is definitely one of them. As I mentioned before, it truly provides insight into a topic that is not widely understood. This film truly displays one of history’s most tragic events in recent years as a view from the Third World.

Works Cited

George, Terry. Hotel Rwanda. New York: Newmarket Press, 2005.

Hotel Rwanda. Screenplay by Keir Pearson and Terry George. Dir. Terry George. Perf. Don Cheadle, Nick Nolte, and Fana Mokoena. MGM Home Entertainment, 2004.

Khan, Shaharyar M. The Shallow Graves of Rwanda. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2000.

Pearson, Keir, and Terry George. "Hotel Rwanda." Hotel Rwanda. Ed. Terry George. New York: Newmarket Press, 2005.

Sachs, Jeffrey D. “The Development Challenge.” Developing World 16th ed. (2006): 5-10.

Sernau, Scott. Global Problems. Boston: Pearson Education, 2006.Twagilimana, Aimable. The Debris of Ham. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 2003.