Hi Mike,

I've seen this movie this week-end and I kinda agree with you. It is not
a masterpiece indeed. Not the kind of movie with a special things. I
was thinking about the more recent "The Pianist", which is rough even
without obvious scene.

However, it shows the awful situation which slowly goes toward horror.
What a single man can do within this context? Beyond that, which is a
classical viewpoint about war/genocide movies, you feel what it means
when 'western countries' withdraw their troops from a conflict. I think
this movie tells a simple story which happens often around us, and more
precisly in Africa. And I'm not sure that the "often" refers to the good
guy which manage to do sth.

So, I liked this movie. Not blinking, not extraordinary, but straight to
the point.

PY

On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 23:44, Mike OBrien wrote:
> The central character in Hotel Rwanda has been described by many
> commentators as the African Schindler. This conjures up an
> interesting cinematic comparison: the different representations of
> mass killing within Schindler's List and Hotel Rwanda. Whereas the
> former greatly affected me, and is - in my opinion - a masterful piece
> of cinema, the latter affected me very little. The difference is not
> in the subject matter - which both horrify (in fact, the nature of the
> Rwandan butcheries is in some senses more chilling) - but in the
> cinematic presentation of the events. For me, Schindler's List
> succeeds in its ability to convey the horror of the unspeakable
> events, whereas Hotel Rwanda comes nowhere near it. To my mind, the
> unimaginative manner in which the film is shot; the stock
> characterisations; and the shunning of any real complexity of feeling;
> are only rarely outweighed by moments of genuine profundity. The big
> scene on the roof, for instance, starts awkwardly and then switches to
> something truly moving: a moment where the artifice of the film
> becomes stripped of its compromises, and feels honest and direct,
> tugging at the heartstrings in a way that doesn't feel like a cheap
> ploy.
>
> Don Cheadle, though, is superb in his performance, and makes the most
> of what I see is a constrained part. His wife in the film - who
> seemed to attract a lot of praise - is, in my opinion, quite week,
> though this is partly due to the stock 'wife in peril' limitations to
> the flimsy character. Of course the 'characters' are based on real
> people - but I think 'based' is the best you can say.
>
> Having said all that, I wouldn't describe the film as poor - just
> disappointing. And I must say, I did learn quite a lot about the
> Rwandan situation from it, although perhaps a very simplified version
> of the reality.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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