The Hotel Rwanda” has been bought for several weeks, but I haven’t watched it, not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how the movie would express the human tragedy, and I didn’t dare to let my mood get too heavy in the face of my busy work day.Watching the movie, several times, I could not help but laugh, of course, the movie is not a funny drama, and here to deal with not too much gore shots, but this many times into the details of the action and language, so I can not help but want to laugh loudly at the world now, the so-called world order and pattern.
This is a movie based on the true story of a Rwandan upscale hotel manager, Paul, a Hutu, who saved the lives of over 1,000 refugees during the 1994 ethnic conflict. When the Belgian colonizers rigidly divided the local indigenous people into Hutus and Tutsis according to the shade of their skin and the height of their noses, and gave the power to the Tutsis when they left, it has caused generations of feud between the two groups ever since. The Hutus, who finally took power, wanted to take revenge on the Tutsis, indulging the hatred of the militia groups, which finally broke out at the point where a president was stabbed to death, “cut down the tall tree”, “Hutu Power”, and the genocide began.
The hotel where Paul was staying was the Belgian owner of a high-class leisure resort, and using his position as hotel manager, he surrounded himself with the military superiors, white people, UN officials, beer, whiskey, cigarettes, and strained barbs, the belief in the power of the West and the maintenance of world order and world peace having permeated his every vein. He had always believed that peace could be achieved in Rwanda by relying on the United Nations, which was dominated by Western European countries, and that at least those white friends could help him in times of need. But after the outbreak of the war, a series of events, all his hopes were in vain, and years of operation could only be exchanged for the continuation of a life, and finally he was forced to leave his homeland. This series of efforts in the middle of the film can only seem to be a huge mockery of reality.
Shot one: the war broke out, the massacre began, the poor few Belgian UN peacekeeping soldiers can only take care of the only few hotels and refugee camps, even 11 peacekeeping soldiers were killed, although there are guns, but can not shoot, the peacekeeping general’s phone call for help, days of waiting, and then wait only a small team of peacekeeping officers and soldiers, thousands of people in the hotel refuge cheered, thinking that the power of peace, the chance of survival chance, but all they brought was an order to help evacuate all UN officials and all foreigners. The peacekeeping general told Paul that because you blacks, and African ones at that, are worthless and not worth the votes in their political jockeying, no one will come to really care if they live or die. Heck, seeing this, I can’t help but nod my head at how pale those beautiful declarations of supposedly preserving peace are here! American GIs, in Vietnam, in Korea, in Iraq, in Somalia appear everywhere, playing the role of the world’s gendarmes, why, because there are their strategic and economic interests, poor Rwanda, even this only interest is not realized, so they can only do their own problems.
Shot 2: A European photojournalist, a very righteous man, fought to the death to capture the genocide outside, except that men’s philandering is always unchecked, and picked up a local Tutsi girl at the hotel. At the time of evacuation, the Tutsi girl cried out hoping he could save her, and all he could do was give Paul money (currency that was no longer useful) hoping he could help, and Paul always believed that Westerners could save them, ah. The day of the evacuation it was raining heavily, the photojournalist walked towards the big bus when the hotel waiter was still behind him with an umbrella, he said repeatedly that he did not want the waiter but insisted, because even then, they were still insisting on their professional – high class hotel star service, the reporter could not help but say the word shame. Westerners brainwashed the locals, told them what is called taste, what is called service, but did not tell the locals how to revitalize their own nation, they just use these to earn money, in life and death related when these things are very boring.
Shot 3: Paul’s trust in the West was so great that many times he used ridiculous excuses to save people, and the truth is that all these excuses helped him achieve his goal of saving people. In the hotel he had been befriending a general of the Hutu government army, asking for the general’s help in the midst of the war in addition to bribes, of course, some threats: once Paul said that the Americans had been watching with satellites, afterwards his wife asked him if it was true, he laughed and said how could he know, could not say that the Americans were hiding in the trees and spying, the two laughed, I also laughed; another time he threatened the general that if he did not go Another time he threatened the general that if he didn’t stop the massacre, if the Americans came to arrest the war criminals, he would not testify in his defense. It was ridiculous, but the general did believe it, and he hoped that if the time came, it would be better to have one more person to speak for him, and one who had done well in white circles. A massacre was averted, but I wonder if Bush is proud of America to see this or ashamed like that photojournalist?
The film got nominated for the Golden Globe and Golden Bear this year. This human catastrophe finally has a film to record today, but I wonder what these Westerners will think after seeing this film? It seems that the Rwandan people should learn from the recent history of the Chinese, relying on others is unreliable, the nation can only be self-reliant to strengthen itself.