There's an interview with the director as a bonus feature on the DVD and he talks about Dallaire's severe problems with depression. But Dallaire comes across in the film as if he's got his stuff together. He doesn't break down and he seems to be a really gentle, caring individual so it's all the more odd to watch scenes of him wandering around an area recalling how there was a pile of bodies here or how children were hacked to death with machetes there. The film has a few different strands running through it. The primary one is of Dallaire retreading the ground where a genocide had taken place 10 years previously. He points out the events that had occurred at various sites as well as him speaking to various survivors and players in the conflict. There's also the look back at the genocide and his mission with news footage, photos, and interviews with other individuals. Rwanda looks so beautiful, so peaceful – there are some remarkable juxtapositions of the scenery in 2004 with it in 1994 littered with bodies.
Viewers are given a hyper-brief look back in history to the roots of the Hutu-Tutsi hatred and it lays the blame as the feet of the Belgians, who were colonial occupiers, and the Catholic Church, whose schools taught generations of Rwandans that the Tutsi were inferior. I remarked in one of my book reviews about how the Hutu and Tutsi were distinguished by physical features and one can see these differences illustrated in the film. But it also makes one wonder how such superficial differences could play a part in genocide. The film is a highlight reel of the book. It goes over the main elements and events that Dallaire had written about – a brief overview of the situation that Dallaire found himself in, the prescient fax, the place crash which killed President Habyarimana, etc. The filmmakers obviously had many opportunities to insert grotesque footage of massacre but they were quite restrained. Perhaps the paucity of such footage served to make their rare appearances all the more moving and have a greater impact. Seeing a trio of Hutu men hacking a group of Tutsis just sitting on the ground helpless to death with machetes is haunting.
It was really weird to see the places that I had only known in my imagination from reading books. My brain had conjured up images that were brown and gray like a scene out of Se7en but the scenes of the genocide were really green. I envisioned Kigali as being less modern, less Western, and more cramped. But it looks lied a nice city. Fairly modern in many parts and wide open with beautiful, spacious vistas. I'm watching it as I type and there's a scene where the soldiers from a European country are evacuating its people. White soldiers helping white folk as the black Tutsis are pleading with them for help as the murderers are on their way. The scene is not as immediate and visceral as those showing people being hacked up with machetes but it is incredibly powerful. Plus, in a way, it summarizes the situation there in 1994.
Other revealing scenes include one in which Dallaire visits a technical school. Dallaire is talking with, among others, the mayor of the town and he discovers that the Belgian troops in the mission were given orders to pull out unbeknownst to him. He also finds out that people had taken shelter there and that they were killed. Dallaire says that, had he known that the Belgians were pulling out and that there were civilians there, he would have sent troops. In another scene, Dallaire and his wife visit the memorial to the 10 Belgian soldiers who were killed. And in yet another, they visit a memorial to the genocide. It's basically a large shack nestled in this lush, green valley. Walking in, we see these huge shelves lined with skulls and other bones.
Despite having saved thousands of people with barely any resources, Dallaire beats himself up quite a bit, ruing an action or inaction on his part. His wife and others that are interviewed say that he shouldn't blame himself for what happened and he shouldn't. But it's impossible for me to know how he feels. Watching him talk to a survivor who lost more than a dozen member of his family – I tried to imagine how he felt but I failed. Many of the Rwandans who survived come across as rather stoic. The genocide was just how it was and it's Dallaire who is emotional. I suppose the Rwandans have to move on – they have no choice. They can't stop and dwell on, say the scenes on my screen right now – of a church full of corpses, parishioner having killed parishioner and a river choked with the bodies of slaughtered innocents.
Over the course of reading two books about the genocide and seeing this film, I've increased my knowledge of Rwanda and the genocide from almost nothing to a working knowledge. But the story of the genocide involves a large cast including many non-Rwandans. After reading and watching, I have to say that I have virtually no faith in the Untied Nations' ability to mediate conflict. I trust that its humanitarian aid organization can do wonders. But I have no faith that it would ever be able to stop another African genocide. As long as people like Madeleine Albright can walk out of a U.N. meeting having done her best to stall any real help for peacekeeping missions, as long as our presidents like Bill Clinton can lie to us saying that they didn't know what was happening despite a constant stream of reports, and as long as we occupy ourselves with O.J. Simpson trials, genocides will happen again. It's not fair to say that the genocide is the fault of the United States and I'm not saying that. But the leaders of my country did their best to aid and abet U.N. bureaucracy and the leaders of other less-powerful nations in not acting. Would it have been that great of a burden to the richest, most powerful nation ever in the history of mankind to have given some armored personnel carriers to help stem the effects of a genocide instead of having to charge money for them and end up haggling over the price? I'm not advocating a situation of America as World Police but even small things can make a great difference. When our president talks, the world listens. But our president can say, "OK fellow nations, let's get our shit together and put a stop to the madness" or he can say, "There's genocidal acts happening but not a genocide, thusly we have no obligations."
In closing, I'd like to point out that a fictional film is being made from Dallaire's book. It too is called Shake Hands With the Devil. According to the Internet Movie Database, filming started last month so expect a release next year.
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