Sometimes in April

This was one of the most moving films I have ever seen. Didn't have the flash of Hotel Rwanda or Schindler's List, but possibly surpassed them in substance. This is not a film for the squeamish, but a film about genocide shouldn't be if it is to deliver its message with maximum effect. Even 11 years on, we in the West get only glimpses into the happenings of the Rwanda Genocide and even fewer in the Western World even attempt to understand the reasons. In just 100 days, over 1 million Tutsis and Moderate Hutus were killed while the world looked the other way. I think this film demonstrated this very well, while at the same time it showed that there were some (Debra Winger's character) in the West who tried everything to help but could do nothing. It doesn't blame the West for the genocide like an uber-liberal, Michael Mooresque America-bashing festival would, but doesn't forgive the West for letting it happen either (which is more than reasonable). "It was Rwandans killing Rwandans", was the line used by the US Army general in the film to give an excuse as to why nothing was done by the outside world. But I think the most important message in this film was that in the living hell that was Rwanda during the genocide, there were still incredible acts of courage and humanity (the Hutu farm wife who sheltered the Matron and the school girls). An aspect of the film that struck hardest with me was how quickly the spiral of madness and slaughter struck so quickly and so terribly. The interplay between the main characters also showed that many of the people who complied in this most evil of crimes were not monsters out of a horror novel, but regular people who through self-interest or ethnic bigotry became the tools of this remarkable insanity. To sum this up, I gave this movie a 10 out of 10. The reason why I did is because this is a movie that should be seen by all. To paraphrase the motto of the survivors of Hitler's Holocaust, "Never again", Sometimes in April reminds us all that we should keep to that promise.

I knew absolutely nothing about this movie when I sat down to watch it. And, I'm ashamed to say, I knew nothing about Haitian writer-director Raoul Peck's work, either.

In many ways, "Sometimes in April" perfectly complements "Hotel Rwanda." Augustin Muganza (Idris Elba), Peck's fictional protagonist, winds up seeking refuge in the swank Kigali hotel managed by Paul Rusesabagina. Of course, Peck's actors - Elba, Carole Karemera, Pamela Nomvete, Oris Erhuero, Fraser James et al - aren't as polished as Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo and Nick Nolte, and his writing isn't as crisp as Terry George and Keir Pearson's script. But Peck's movie still packs a hefty punch, thanks to honest performances and some wrenching moments reminiscent of "The Killing Fields" (1984) and "Schindler's List" (1993).

Unlike George's Oscar-nominated movie, "Sometimes in April" doesn't tell just one person's story in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It revolves around a few - Augustin, a moderate Hutu military officer; his brother, Honore, a radical preaching hatred against Tutsis and moderate Hutus on the radio; and Martine, Augustin's fiancée dealing with her own nightmares. Peck also delves into the aftermath of the genocide and the International Criminal Tribunal in Tanzania.

The trials against the war criminals serves as bookends for Peck's plot. It's not a novel device using flashbacks to tell the story. It serves the film, though it's one of the unpolished qualities about Peck's movie. On the other hand, it speaks to the importance of bringing those thugs to justice and also of the survivors' need to tell the world what happened and moving on with their lives.

The performances, for the most part, are rough and raw. That works to the film's advantage. Peck's dialogue isn't exactly crisp. In fact, it seems stilted, at times. But because I didn't know any of the actors by name, their performances held a certain kind of honesty. I was somehow more drawn into their stories than I would have been had, say, their roles been played by better known Americans or Britons.

There are two familiar, recognizable faces - Debra Winger as Assistant Secretary of State Prudence Bushnell and Toby Emmerich as a U.S. military man, both frustrated at being unable to convince their superiors that the United States should get involved to stop the massacres.

Peck gives us a more vivid picture of the slaughter than George did. Peck shows us the huge scale of the massacre. The scenes unsettle us, make us shudder. We see how otherwise considerate, rational people, such as priests, were placed in a horrible bind when faced with possibly giving up some of the children in their care to save others.

Contrary to what some might say, Peck's film isn't anti-American. It's appalling that western nations sat idly by and let these horrific crimes take place and Peck rightly indicts them for their apathy. What Peck does is capture the United States' reluctance to help stop the massacres because the Clinton administration feared another Mogadishu. Let's face it, the American media and government cared little about what was happening because it was happening in Africa and it's a continent the U.S. cares little about. American media was keener on covering Kurt Cobain than the slaughter of tens of thousands of Africans. Even today, the media and public care more about a pop star's trial and a cute, young white bride getting cold feet than another genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

But it's tough to tag Peck as anti-American when he uses real footage of a State Department news conference where the spokeswoman tries to convince the press corps that although there have been "acts of genocide" committed in Rwanda, what was happening wasn't exactly "genocide." The absurdity of the government's argument, the Clinton administration's parsing of words as it tried to weasel out of committing troops to stop what was clearly genocide, is clearly illustrated when a reporter asks, "How many acts of genocide does it take to have a genocide?" The spokeswoman answer is a marvel in government-speak.

True, Peck has the luxury of hindsight to put words into characters' mouths. One Rwandan military official opines the U.S. won't intervene because there's no oil at stake and, later, Emmerich's character predicts what Clinton would do years later. Of course, Clinton apologized later for not intervening to stop the genocide, though it was of no help to those who lost everything. Maybe some day, George W. Bush will apologize to the world and Iraqis for waging an unjust war to prove his mettle and getting absolutely everything wrong leading up to and after the invasion. Yeah, right.

Peck is correct to attack the United States' apathy toward what happened in Rwanda. We can't insist on being the beacon of freedom and democracy to the world and then turn our backs when hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children were being slaughtered. However, Peck doesn't limit his scathing attacks to the U.S. He also criticizes France for its complicity. We see the Rwandan military praising France for providing weapons and, later, we see how the French helped get war criminals out of Rwanda.

"Sometimes in April" could have been more polished. And Peck could have paced his story a bit faster. But those are minor quibbles. Like "Hotel Rwanda," this is a movie that must be seen, if not to see what happened 11 years ago, then to find out how the world's most powerful nations disgraced themselves by doing nothing while 800,000 innocent men, women and children were brutally slaughtered in a mere 100 days.

I have just seen the movie, and for a young person, I was genuinely touched by the substance of this movie. 11 years ago, at the age of the 10, these acts of genocide completely washed over me, and I, like many others just summed it up to yet another tragedy, but I never put it upon myself to learn the history of why this genocide happened. Why there was such conflict in this nation. Seeing this movie, however, has opened my eyes a lot, compelling me to find out more about the history of this nation and the reason behind such hateful violence. This movie did not attempt to gloss over the details, to sell a story. It tried to encapsulate the essence of that time, and the ramifications it had on survivors years later. In 2:30 hours, I feel as if the director and the actors themselves, did a superb job in basically summarizing the events of this tragedy, enough for a person to get a gist of why it happened. Only with a knowledge of history and research would one really know the whole story, but all in all, I found it to be a very poignant movie.

This is not an easy movie to watch, but I urge everyone to see it. I was a struggle not to cry; so I held my breath each time because I knew the minute I started crying, I would not be able to watch the entire movie.

The movie not only points out the evil people can inflict on each other, it also depicts how silence and avarice can lead to a horrific end.

When people discuss genocide, they go back to Hitler, Pol Pot, etc - this movie goes to show that we still do not care enough about our fellow humans to take care of them and protect them.

There are several ironies in this movie - one of which was the Olympic games. People worldwide were tuned into the Olympics and keeping tabs of the events at the same time others were being butchered.

In 100 days, almost a million people were murdered. It's unimaginable how a tragedy on this scale remains unknown - even scarier is this is proof that it can and possibly will happen again.

"Sometimes in April" attempts to tell the story of the 1994 wholesale slaughter of about 800,000 mostly innocent people during the 100 day national ordeal when the top blew off the powder keg which Rwanda, Africa had become. This film of civil war and genocide focuses on one man, Augustin (Elba), a Rwandan soldier and his extended family as it jumps around in location and time using his story to connect the dots. Although this HBO docudrama makes a satisfactory dramatic watch, is asks more questions than it answers and leaves one wondering, among other things, how it is possible that so many helpless and innocent people could be savagely murdered by their own countrymen. The historical background and Rwandan zeitgeist are not sufficiently presented but the brutality of the horrific genocide perpetrated by the Hutus upon the Tutsis and Hutu moderates, stands out in bold relief. Snapshots of US State Department bureaucrat Prudence Bushnell's (Winger) frustration with her own government's slow reaction to the crisis and the seemingly inadequate UN war crimes tribunals only hint at the problems associated with intervention in civil strife and prosecution of war criminals. Overall, the film is a worthwhile entertaining and educational watch with language, violence, sex/rape thoughtfully maintained at a level which would probably yield about a PG-13 rating. (B)