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Hotel Rwanda: A Cruel Historical EventMarking a sad event in the history of Rwandan people, “Hotel Rwanda” assumes an artistic approach to narrate a real life occasion that saw hundreds of thousands of adults and children lose their lives in the hands of merciless militia. The viewers are engraved in a piece of art that unfolds a genocide that claimed a couple of generations of Rwandans whose fate would have probably changed Rwanda for the better. In an industry dominated by fiction, and entertaining elements of art, the director, Terry George, craftily choses a medium that attracts billions of people to remind everyone that every wrong thing can happen a hundred days.
Terry George’s cast brilliantly uses art to document an act of unhinged barbarism and reminds its audience that human acts can be accomplished, even if everything seems impossible in the face of such a monster.The film does well to settle for a plot that exploits artistic features to develop themes that reflect the actual elements that fail the Rwandan people in a feud hat revolves around Hutu and Tutsi people. While family values are a basic element of Rwandan people, the marriage between character Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu, and Tatiana, a Tutsi, raises some questions for a feud that sees the two communities fight each other.
Their ethnic differences are exploited to demonstrate that people can exist peaceful despite their differences, and even raise families together as decent people. They manage to help securely thousands of people evade death by hiding them in a hotel[Geo041]. The film is not short of accuracy as it identifies aspects that make Rwanda a bed of moral degradation. Corruption is an order of the day. This features the leaders who openly accept bribes at a time when they should be deliberating issues to resolve the crises.
With artistic liberty, the cast is able to spare some entertaining scenes that break the tension as the audience is lost in the horror that claims lives of so many people. But that does not overshadow the suffering underwent by the victims. The scenes are a constant reminder that fear was an order of the day as people live a moment at a time. Terry George’s work is commendable, but the background and plot of the film do not give every primary fact one would want to hear about the Rwandan genocide.
For an audience who would be up for a thorough breakdown of the facts of the genocide, secondary sources would be needed. Scenes of armed militia in green would tell of war, but the cast captured in modern times misses historical aspects that happened in 1964. In essence, the event began in April in 1964 and Hutu Power movement was the brain behind this act[Wor12]. The militia groups was commonly Hutu supremacists who pretty overwhelmed the Tutsi people. While the film sheds some light on mass killings and internal displacement of people, it seemingly fails to stress on how a large proportion of people was turned into refugees.
The number of people on the run was so huge that it would overwhelm the UN. The genocide was as vicious as the militia was well organized to carry the act leading to large numbers of deaths and refugees[BBC142]. “Hotel Rwanda” is great documentation of an event in history that had a devastating outcome as hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. The choice of this platform captures a massive audience as the film sheds some light on the moral elements that define the Rwandan society.
It demonstrates that people of different values can co-exist peacefully as decent human beings. Nevertheless, though it accurately tells of the situation in artistic approach, the cast miss a few elements of the actual moment that happened in 1964.Works CitedGeo041: , (George), Wor12: , (World-Without-genocide), BBC142: , (BBC),
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