Although “Hotel Rwanda” and “Shake Hands with the Devil” showed completely different aspects of the genocide in Rwanda, the two both managed to show what true evil is. In “Shake Hands with the Devil” we see the perspective of a UN soldier, doing everything in his power to stop the massacre of Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. General Dellaire is their General and realizes he is over his head, but because of his neutral position Dellaire allows us to see the perspective of both sides of the war. On the other hand “Hotel Rwanda” is shown from the view of Paul Rossesabagina, a Hutu hotel manager. In my opinion, because of the fact that Paul is native to Rwanda the perspective is that of the people, and really shows how no one was safe and how hopeless they were. The comparison between the perspectives of the two stories is really what shows the bias and how the two stories contradict each other. Although both stories quite obviously give off a sense of evil and darkness, they are seen through different eyes and put the blood on different peoples hands. For example in “Hotel Rwanda” even though it was the native Hutus and Tutsis with the machetes, the movie almost gave off the impression that the people were angry with the UN. I found it amazing that this could happen considering these soldiers were here doing what they could to help the situation. Also in this movie, the Rwandan army was portrayed as just as evil as the rebel forces. “Shake Hand with the Devil” on the other hand was much different. This movie really pushed the fact that it was the Tutsis that started the war when in fact it was more mutual than anything. The UN was shown as very helpful in the genocide, but on the other hand it kind of felt like this movie wanted to make people feel like the United States wanted nothing to do with helping the problem.
Although I personally don’t doubt the quality of evidence of either of the two movies I question the purpose of “Hotel Rwanda” and found “Shake Hands with the Devil” a bit more convincing for a couple of reasons. First of all and most importantly, “Hotel Rwanda” is a Hollywood movie in my opinion, and was made more to make money than to raise awareness. Some parts of the story seemed extremely exaggerated like when it turned out that his co worker was actually a Hutu interhamwe, although it might have been true, I found moments like these to take away from what was really happening For this reason, I just think that the story might have been twisted or exaggerated in certain cases to make the story more dramatic or appealing to an audience. Secondly, “Shake Hands with the Devil” to me really gave off a more realistic feel, even if at times it did get a bit gruesome. Maybe it was because the movie was filmed in Rwanda or because it had those dark subtitles at the start explaining things I just found the movie more believable. Lastly this movie was filmed under the supervision of General Dellaire, and after seeing what he has gone through, I find it hard to believe he would let anything but the truth into his movie.
The differences and biases are obvious, but the dark and evil vibe that these two movies gave off was astounding. The aspect of evil that hit me the hardest and truly defined evil in my opinion was the murder of the innocent. Both movies showed at least one scene with piles and piles of dead bodies, women, men and children. The thought that these hopeless people were being killed for no particular reason really struck me. I remember the line from “Hotel Rwanda”, “Please don’t kill me! I Promise I won’t be Tutsi anymore” the fact that no matter what these children did or said, they were going to be killed was another thing that showed the true evil of this genocide. The last presence of evil that was shown in both movies was the wake of destruction that was left in Rwanda. I recall from the interview “Children of Rwanda’s Genocide” the one in three children were left without a home or parents not only showed darkness but that it was going to take a long time for this darkness to be lifted from grief-stricken Rwanda. Because if the genocide is over, the evil will not be forgotten.
