Evil

The other day, I was talking movies with my uncle. I mentioned I enjoyed Hotel Rwanda to which he replied "That movie sucks." As I was thinking, does my uncle harbor pro-Hutu Power sympathies, he added "Go see Sometimes in April, now that's a movie." I'd be a fool not to follow up on that recommendation.

The two movies are quite different. Sometimes is to Hotel as Schindler's List is to Shoah. Both Schindler's and Hotel provide a glimmer of hope in pitch black darkness. Sometimes in April, like Shoah, focuses on the survivors and the participants and how they deal with it. The story is set in 1994 and 2004. In 1994, the main character dithers about sending his family out of Kigali and (as we learn in the first few moments) they die for it. What's worse, his brother played some sort of role in it. In 2004, his brother is on trial for his role and he agrees to go see him.

The details are excellent. Right after the first night of attacks, the scene flashes to DC where instead of Rwanda the news is talking about the death of Kurt Cobain. In the first scene we have a (presumably Hutu girl) scoff at a shy (presumably Tutsi) girl who wants to know more about the atrocities. Most of the kids have uniforms but they shy girl does not, setting her apart. Maybe this is a message that the minority Tutsi are still set apart in 2004.

The movie has a much greater focus on the scale of evil than Hotel. Crazed murderers attack a Catholic girl's school. Machete gangs surround terrified refugees, corpses are piled in trucks, it's all there to see.

The West's role gets a bigger emphasis in a few ways. The US, petrified of getting into another Mogadishu, dithers. That was bad. What is worse is that the French (and Belgians?) are shown helping the leaders of the genocide. And the blue hats look pretty worthless. To be fair, they are peacekeepers, not peacemakers. But still.

There are lots of questions raised by the movie, such as how can you live your life if you survived? How can you live with your neighbors? What should the US have done(less easy I think than most people think)?