Hotel Rwanda Essay

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Hotel Rwanda movie review By: Valentina Hoyos Terry George’s 2004 film Hotel Rwanda is based on the true events that took place during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. The movie’s main character is Paul Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle who appears in almost every scene, and thus carries the weight of the entire movie. The movie is a historical but personal drama, depicting the events around the genocide, particularly as it was experienced by Paul Rusesabagina, who acted as the manager of the Mille Collines Hotel. He took in more than 1200 Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees into the hotel. Cheadle’s convincing portrayal of Paul Rusesabagina in his desperate and problematic situation carries the film to its conclusion very well. The Tutsis (whom the Hutus call cockroaches) are of higher social status than the Hutus this inferior social status of the Hutus was forcibly fixed ' by the Hutus themselves in an eruption of massive slaughter. In a very short time (100 days) about a million people, both Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by extremist Hutus. The movie adequately portrays the horror, the torment, and the despair experienced by the persecuted people of Rwanda, but fails to adequately address why the violence and genocide occurred in the first place. There is only a brief explanation about the origins of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in the movie. Thus the movie is not an exposition of the causes of the genocides, but simply of the horror that is universally understandable Hotel Rwanda is a movie about heroism and survival. Although the movie portrays a terrible crime against humanity, it also makes the viewer consider that there is nothing really different about Rwanda and its people. Given the same circumstances, any nation’s people would act in exactly the same way The perspective of the movie can best be exemplified by three major scenes; the first

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