Hotel Rwanda

I just got back from seeing Hotel Rwanda in the Angelika with "M". I have to say that this movie is one of the most heart-wrenching movies I have seen, perhaps ever. I was really moved.

Basically the movie centered on a man who became an accidental hero in the Rwandian genocide by saving some 1200 people, both Hutu and Tutsi.

The 10th anniversary of the genocide recently came and went, and I hope that the world has since learned a few lessons from this, though given the events in the Sudan, I suspect we have not.

One can learn lots of lessons from this story. The first is that many people are sub-human, whole countries-full, and we have to take that in to account when thinking about how we interact with other cultures. Second, the UN is both powerless and fairly racist. They will most likely never protect anyone. The world, until the Iraq conflicts, would never protect anyone being brutalized by a non-white. And even now, most of the world is still against protecting Iraqis from Ba'athists.

I left the movie wishing that I could be part of stopping the next genocidal maniac. Some things are just wrong, and there is nothing more poignant than this movie to show you what it might be like.