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To Be Human (A Look at Hotel Rwanda) |
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Film Feature
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Written by Eric Kuiper
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Tuesday, 13 February 2007 |
Description
Feature Film Title: Hotel RwandaRelease Date: 2004Genre:
Drama
Writer: Terry George and Keir PearsonDirector: Terry George
I couldn't move.
I could barely even breathe.
I felt like I was being pinned to my seat.
The film was over but I couldn't bring myself to stand up and walk out. It seemed so totally inappropriate to go on with my Friday evening as planned.
The emotions were a mix of disbelief and utter sadness. I looked around the theater. I wasn't alone. No one was moving. No one was going anywhere.
There must have been over four hundred of us in that theater. Four hundred different lives, different backgrounds, different stories. Somehow this film cut through all the differences and connected with one thing we all new to be true: What happened in Rwanda in the 1990s was wrong and it should have been stopped. 
There is nothing unique about being disgusted by the genocide that took place in Rwanda. In fact, while I sat in that theater looking around at the people that filled it with me, I realized that it was part of what makes me Human. It is Something that I share with all my fellow humans. I share a Core that hates the senseless destruction of life.
To be Human is to hate such things; even more so, it is to be against such things.
But like Sufjan Steven sings in his hauntingly beautiful song about the serial killer John Wayne Gacey Jr. – and in my best behavior – I am really just like him – look beneath the floorboards – for the secrets I have hid.
I want to hate the Hutus for what they have done. But I am Hutu. There are still things that at my core I know to be wrong, but I am not against them.
Do I stand against this Core because I am "only human," or is the problem that I am not Human enough?
Is it possible that a human who is everything they were created to be isn't less human, but instead Fully Human.
I am a human.
Hutus are humans.
While we share a Core that guides us, we at times, stand against that Core.
Could this be the root of all of our problems?
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