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Points of View
Don Cheadle's Portrayal Is Compelling in 'Hotel Rwanda'As I write this, the Academy Awards are six days off. Much of the talk is about leading actors such as Jamie Foxx, Clint Eastwood and Johnny Depp. For me the choice is simple -- Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda.Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, assistant manager for a Sabena-operated hotel in the capital city of Kigali during the bloody civil war between Hutus and Tutsis that left a million Rwandans dead in the summer of 1994.I recall some of the images shown on ABC's Nightline. Among those seared in my memory:Churches in the countryside that were pillaged and burned.More than 300 Tutsi men, women and children huddled in a schoolhouse in the countryside under the protection of a few Belgian troops. Meanwhile Hutu militia drove back and forth in their jeeps, waving Chinese machetes that cost 10 cents to make, calling for the death of "cockroaches." After a few days, the Belgians pulled out, leaving their wards at the mercy of the mob. When the television crews returned, they found only corpses hacked to pieces.In Hotel Rwanda, director Terry George has captured this grisly history on the actual sites of massacres. He shows the rooftop of Rusesabagina's hotel where several Tutsi families leapt to their deaths rather than endure rape and murder. He recreates the soft, squishy sound of Rusesabagina's overloaded van as it made its way early one morning along a foggy river road -- only for the occupants to discover they were driving over corpses and body parts left by the militia.A decade ago, democratic governments and tyrants quibbled over whether to ascribe the victims' deaths to genocide or, as a Clinton spokesman at the State Department parsed it, "acts of genocide." The United Nations waffled. The French, who were supplying most of the arms in the conflict, stopped after appeals were made to their president. And many Africans blamed the tragedy upon the Belgians who in the 19th century introduced the artificial concept of race among the tribes.As neighbors and friends were cut down before him, Paul Rusesabagina could not remain idle. To frustrate the murderers, he removed numbers on hotel room doors, altered the computerized registration lists, and opened his hotel to 1,268 refugees. He badgered and bribed militia leaders to secure food and exit visas for his charges. On several occasions he intervened with cash just as someone was about to be beheaded. He endured threats and physical abuse to save the lives of people he barely knew.Some critics have likened Rusesabagina's role to that of Oskar Schindler. Rusesabagina offers the right people scotch and Cuban cigars. Because he was a Tutsi, he need not have identified with his Hutu wife and her family.There is something more appealing in Cheadle's Rusesabagina than Liam Neeson's Schindler. The former is a principled man who sincerely loves his wife and children. There is a humanity in him, expressed in a touching, comic moment as he begins to embrace his wife only to be shaken by an explosion that rocks the building. He is heroic, willing to put his own life on the line as hedares corrupt militia men to do the right thing. His triumph comes not when he returns to Kigali, but when he and his wife finally discover their niece and nephew among infants in the confusion of a refuge camp.I know people do not relish going to movies that deal with difficult stories like this. Memory is painful but we have an obligation to the victims."