I am waving the white flag. I accept defeat. Hayfever has got me, I am imprisoned in its snotty grip. (Where does all the snot come from? I seem to have limitless supplies of the stuff).
At times like this, when your thoughts are fuggy it helps to think about something shocking to shake you out of your vagueness. Thinking about Hotel Rwanda does exactly that — slapping me into clarity, making me unable to dwell on my suffering after seeing those who suffer far more.
Hotel Rwanda is the story of a chap who shelters Tutsis and moderate Hutus from the genocide committed by machete wielding Hutus. Using his position as manager of a Belgian hotel, he somehow staves off the militia with a combination of his contacts and his sharp wits.
Perhaps because it was directed by a Northern Irishman, Terry George, most of the focus is on the idiocy of arbitrarily saying that one group of people are inherently bad. There are no scenes of really brutal machete attacks — it is all out in the world of the radio show that tells its listeners to “cut down the tall trees” (Tutsis are apparently slightly taller) and stamp out the “cockroaches”. The underlying reasons are also ignored. There is no mention, for instance, of the sense of over-population and lack of resources that Jared Diamond talks about in Collapse.
Despite the simple liberalism of its explanation, it is an excellent film — well-acted, beautifully tender in places and an unbearably tragic depiction of the depravities man is capable of committing. It certainly puts my hayfever into perspective.
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