Hotel Rwanda is a 2004 film about the tragedy of an ethnic conflict in the small African country of Rwanda in 1994.
Paul, who works as a manager at a senior hotel run by Air Belgium in Rwanda, only wants to settle his family and manage the hotel over the long-standing dispute between Hutu and Tutsi in the country.
And he has a set of business philosophy, relying on clever wrists to run the hotel with sound and color. George, the big-plate merchant who supplied the restaurants, was a radical Hutu who often used underground radio stations to clamor for Hutu unity to root out the country's Tutsi.
The day was the day when the Hutu president spoke and signed an agreement with the Tutsi rebels, and the United Nations sent peacekeeping troops to ensure that the signing formalities were completed. In the evening, the presidential plane was shot down, and the Hutu people pointed their finger at the Tutsi, and the militia began a series of bloody massacres.
Paul sheltered a group of neighbors that night, and the next day, the Hutus broke in, and Paul used all the money he had to buy the lives of people, including his wife, who was a Tutsi, and took the opportunity to hide in the hotel.
Because the hotel was a Belgian asset, and there were many customers from Europe, the Hutus militia did not dare to act rashly, and all the Tutsi who fled into the hotel were temporarily respite.
Massacres outside the hotel continued, anarchy was followed, and refugees who had the luck of arriving at the hotel crowded in. Paul and his party waited for the UN peacekeepers to brief Headquarters before leaving Rwanda.
But when the rescue troops arrived at the hotel, they told Colonel Oliver, who was leading the peacekeepers, that he was deeply ashamed of the news that the rescue forces had come to take away the non-Rwandans in the hotel and reduce the United Nations forces stationed in the hotel, and that the Hutus should not be attacked. Then all the foreigners left with shame.
The next day the Hutu militia broke in and demanded the surrender of the accommodation list, Paul took the opportunity to seek protection from the head office in the name of defending the hotel's assets, and the president relied on political connections to drive the Hutu militia across the sea, but he had no choice but to tell that there was only one thing that could be done, and that the Western countries had no intention of intervening in civil unrest.
Paul therefore encouraged the refugees in the hotel to call people they knew from abroad to force outsiders to help. This time Paul went to George's supply hotel again, talked to George, and learned that the next target was the Tutsi refugees in the hotel.
Paul returned via George's instructions to take the river path, but was surprised to find that the trail was full of corpses and could not be passed at all. Paul returned to the hotel to recall the near collapse of what he saw, but still strongly protected the lives of many people in the hotel, including his wife and children.
The next day, many people were given shelter abroad, including Paul's family, for help from people abroad. The men were prepared to go to the airport under the protection of the United Nations forces, and Paul looked back at his compatriots who were still in the hotel before getting on the bus and decided to stay in the hotel.
Under the protection of the troops, they should have arrived at the airport smoothly, but they were secretly accused on the way, resulting in the failure of the escort, and the group rushed back to the hotel. In the past, Paul had used the resources of the hotel to seduce the Rwandan army general, but now he asked the general for help but was rejected, because Paul no longer had free resources to squeeze.
In the turbulent situation, Paul thought of going to the empty "Diplomat's Hotel" to find some resources that only Paul had access to. The general was tempted to go with Paul, who handed over a batch of whiskey, but the general intended to take Paul away but did not intend to return to the hotel.
Paul threatened that if the general did not help, the international court would one day consider him an international war criminal, and the general would be blamed for the massacre, and it would be up to Paul to defend him, at which point the general would consider it and return to the hotel to protect the refugees.
Colonel Oliver received word that the Hutu militia was willing to exchange the hotel refugees for Hutu hostages held by the Tutsi rebels, and had the opportunity to send everyone to a safe haven occupied by the Tutsi rebels, all of whom arrived by car under the protection of the United Nations forces. Paul's wife, who had been thinking about her brother's children, was also found with the help of Mrs. Archer.
This film has not allowed me to see such a poignant Western film for a long time. One of the most memorable passages in the film came from a Western journalist.
They were filming a brutal massacre, and Paul thanked them for showing it to get the international eye on it, but one of the reporters said, "It's useless, people see footage of these massacres and they say, 'Oh my God, this is terrible,' and then go on eating their dinner..."
Indeed, he is right, many times people are so indifferent, these pictures broadcast through the TV are just "events" in life for them, and only when the "event" becomes an "experience", people will face it squarely, otherwise after turning off the TV or eating, these terrible things will still be left behind.
What makes me feel most sad is that when the rescue forces were retreating from non-Rwandans, all the hotel staff also helped to hold umbrellas to send these "VIPs" away, and the tears flowed down without disobedience, and I only felt that in such a turbulent situation, the Western world was cold-eyed, leaving the locals to fend for themselves, feeling the helplessness of weak countries and the reality of international politics.
It's a very heavy movie. Although the director does not deliberately emphasize the tragic situation of the massacre, he mainly hopes to bring out the chaotic situation of the Massacre and the distinction between the ugly and the good in the human heart through the story of the protagonist Paul.
When I watched this movie, I seemed to be integrated into the plot, feeling obviously uneasy and afraid, like having a nightmare, and waking up to be glad that I had not experienced that terrible purgatory on earth.
For this film, I think it is well-deserved to become the 159th place of Douban Movies, after all, it faithfully presents inter-racial conflicts, highlights the mercenary thinking of the Western world, and makes modern people think deeply, so as not to repeat the same mistakes and cause regrets again.