Hotel Rwanda: **** (spoilers)

Hotel Rwanda is a thought-provoking film about a hotel manager (the always awesome Don Cheadle) caught in the crossfire of Rwanda's 1994 insanity. He uses the hotel and all its resources to harbor refugees -- saving over 1000 people, according to the text at the end.

Of course, that left almost a million folks _not_ saved. About one person in 9 was slaughtered. The point of the movie was that the international community stood by and did nothing (the press was apparently distracted by a less serious crisis in the Balkans at the time) while groups of thugs with machetes roamed the countryside, hacking whoever annoyed them and couldn't pay the bribes.

Of course, there are no easy solutions. Rwanda's population growth has been insanely rapid, with most women bearing their first child before 16 and having 5-9 children. (Catholicism is the top religion. Joy. Real easy for the pope to say that birth control is bad, with Italy's population in decline for 40 years. Bush also supports this insane policy that abstinence is the only appropriate birth control.) Basically the population got too large for the country to support, and everybody started skipping meals, until finally violence ensued -- largely racial, but often economic as well. That is, people who couldn't afford shoes for their children would slay the people who could.

If we step in with guns and force the violence to stop (expensive and dangerous work) and we step in with food to stave off starvation, it just allows the population to grow even more before the inevitable collapse. Really, major policy changes need to be established, like population control and respect for long-term ecological effects. Not easy stuff -- but civil war and genocide every ten years to keep population in check hardly seems to be a graceful answer.

See it on video when you're in the mood to be depressed.

Filed Thu - February 10, 2005, 11:10 AM in

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