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This is one of the saddest movies. I don’t remember crying this much over a film, in my adult life, ever. Measured by tears, it rivals the childhood and adolescent signposts (for children of the ‘80’s) of E.T. (my dad had to carry me out of the theater, I was sobbing so hard) and Beaches (please don’t judge me).

Despite shoddy filmmaking by Terry George, the force of this amazing based-on-actual-events story is such that it overcomes the aesthetic failings (much like Ray, which rises above its generic biopic trappings by dint of Jamie Foxx’s vitality). In 1994, Paul Rusesabagina (elegantly played by Don Cheadle), manager of a four-star hotel in Rwanda, harbored Tutsi refugees (of which his wife, Tatiana, heartbreakingly rendered by Sophie Okonedo, was one), protecting them from slaughter by militant Hutus, while America, along with the other ‘First World’ nations, did nothing.

The delicately-tuned characterization of Cheadle’s Rusesabagina, both in script and performance, is one of the great achievements of Hotel Rwanda. It doesn’t proffer him as an effortless hero, but simply a human being struggling to ensure the survival of himself and his family, and his evolution is interestingly detailed. While, at first, he comes off as stingy, and overly concerned with his job, a contrast brought forth by the expansiveness of Tatiana, we slowly come to recognize this as the forward-thinking rationing of political capital he’s amassed over the years through service at a prestigious establishment. But his faith in forthcoming help, and reticence in aiding others outside his circle, ends in the stunning moment when he learns, to the tune of Nick Nolte’s jolting words, “You’re not even a nigger. You’re African,” that there will be no intervention, that the value placed on his country and people, by the outside world, is nil. International troops will arrive, but only to escort out the remaining tourists. As the Americans/Europeans are evacuated from the hotel, the disbelieving Rwandans look on, the facts sinking in. A lot of lip service might be paid to the sacredness of each human life, but this scene exhibits how proportionate this is to how economically viable you are. Why bother with the expenditures of involvement for a poor, developing nation, an insignificant trading partner? What possible payback could there be for the superpowers? Simply put, one of the most shaming moments ever committed to celluloid. The full-scale crying started here. Like the evacuees on the bus, looking down and out through the windows at the locals, I felt helpless, humiliated. I was grateful to be swathed in the comforting darkness of the movie theater. From this moment on, we witness Paul’s transformation from self-serving preservation to provider.

Unlike most films that move in this vein (prominent among them Schindler’s List, Dances with Wolves, Snow Falling on Cedars, Glory, and my main bitch, The Last Samurai, the full rant of which you can read here, if you’re interested), there is, thankfully, no mediating white lead through whom we’re meant to identify in lieu of Paul. The closest Hotel Rwanda comes to such devices are the slightly glorified cameos by Nolte, as a U.N. Peacekeeper (“not a Peacemaker”), and Joaquin Phoenix’s journalist. In the hands of other screenwriters, either one of these secondary roles easily could’ve become the principle character, to the detriment of the entire project. Luckily, in the only instance that I’m aware of, this doesn’t happen. There’s no Liam Neeson, Kevin Costner, Ethan Hawke, Matthew Broderick, or Tom Cruise, to steal the limelight away from, respectively, the Jewish, the Native-Americans, the Japanese-Americans, the African-Americans, or the Japanese. If you see my point.

Despite this more enlightened structural configuration, however, one feature that detracts from the integrity of the representation is the way the Africans are filmed. It’s as if the director has internalized the ethnographic images from National Geographic, along with other anthropological documentaries (it doesn’t seem like intentional mimicking), and has no other way to visualize the people. Ample evidence of this can be found in trite frames capturing iconic poses, for instance when the children dance in brightly colored clothing in the courtyard, or the final image of Paul, his family, and others, young and old, walking towards the camera, holding hands in full-shot. These play almost like stock footage, and because of their clichéd quality, reduce the impact with which more original storyboarding might’ve imbued the material.

So this is the oxymoronic quandary of political entertainment. I loved Hotel Rwanda, but in its conception and form, it makes me uneasy. How do I reconcile my deep emotional response to it with its, ultimately, disturbing lack of politicism?

Conventionally, movies focus on the survivors of tragedies, understandable given the three-act structure so integral to most, along with the general public’s partiality to triumph-of-the-human-spirit stories. For this reason, what I most appreciate about Schindler’s List (though I obviously have my issues with it) is Spielberg’s highlighting in red, in an otherwise black and white universe, the little girl who doesn’t make it. The viewer shares tangentially in her story as she weaves in and out, until one day Schindler spots her lifeless body amongst a pile of others in a moment that punctuates with sad efficacy the enraging fact of such cruel and pointless human death. The ingeniously individualized way it’s dealt with makes it more immediate, personal. Just once, though, I’d like to see an entire piece based on those who don’t survive.

Movies in the mode of Hotel Rwanda are implicitly made to keep memories alive so we’ll never forget, never let it happen again (these platitudes infuse the films), while more often than not, they seem to function as a vast social placating apparatus to assuage our collective guilt. The problem is exactly as stated by Phoenix’s character: “If people see this [footage of the massacre], they’ll say, ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible.’ And then go on eating their dinners.” The claims on history, upon which these works draw their power, ultimately also dooms them to a certain irrelevancy, since relegation to the past works to contain many dissonances which arise out of enunciation. The positive closure afforded by an uplifting conclusion seals off any potential action, because why bother getting so worked up? It’s already over. But I’m not sure how a different telling of the story might change viewer reception. If it was shot more experimentally? If the ending was less hopeful? If it was done as a documentary with actual footage and interviews with the survivors? I know I studied this in film school, but I’m pondering less theoretically, more practically.

With the same thing happening all over again in Darfur, and still nothing being done, it’s hard not to wonder. Again, the dissembling, the hedging around the use of the term ‘genocide,’ because then we’d be obligated to intervene. And despite the high-profile nature of Hotel Rwanda and the accolades it’s receiving (though snubbed by the Academy Awards for Best Picture) the media continues to largely ignore the crisis, along with the Bush administration (not that this is any big surprise given their blatant, at the expense of everything else, catering to the demands of only those who line their pockets), and no matter how many petitions I sign, or letters I write to senators as a part of concerted efforts organized by Moveon.org or Truemajority, it doesn’t seem to matter. So many people have been moved by this movie, but no one’s marching on Washington to force the government to take a look at the parallel situation happening in Sudan (which is, in a way, understandable, since, as it is, there aren’t enough hours in the day to protest everything that needs protesting).

So do we really learn from past mistakes? Or do movies like Hotel Rwanda allow us to acknowledge historical atrocities in as comfortable an environment as possible, with absolution the reward for enduring two eviscerating hours? Can mainstream narrative films ever inspire actual politicism? Have any effect on the outside, material world? Should I stop expecting a formulaic movie, no matter how inspiring, to be anything more than entertaining self-flagellation?

- km

(beware of spoilers)
Having waited so long and with such bated breath for Hero (killing urge after urge to watch my brother’s pirated edition because of my conviction that it had to be seen on the big screen), only to be disappointed, I was cautiously anticipatory this time for Zhang Yimou’s follow-up, House of Flying Daggers. Though I loved Hero’s color-schemes coordinated according to varying perspectives/degrees of truth, its rah-rah Chinese nationalist conclusion left me feeling let down. It was particularly jarring coming from a director who rose to fame by casting critical glances at his homeland in the form of such features as Raise the Red Lantern and To Live, so much so that they were banned in his country even as he was acclaimed for them abroad.

But while the politics and stilted storytelling structure somewhat constipates Hero’s flow, House of Flying Daggers immediately lures you in with its eye-popping candy colors and breathtakingly stunning triad of actors. I came in about fifteen minutes late (incredibly, there were no previews) and though I’d lost some expository information, as soon as I sat down and Zhang Ziyi, as Mei, began dancing with her long, flowing sleeves, I was captivated, and didn’t feel I’d missed a beat. Though I’m not sure the actress commands the sheer presence of the director’s previous lover-muse, Gong Li (it’ll be interesting to see how she fares next to the icon in the upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha), and she annoys me with her mousy flimsiness in Hero (next to the weary, steady grace of the luminous Maggie Cheung), her blind heroine in this piece is frighteningly gifted, and possessed of a nervy strength and intensity (much like the character that started her star rising in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) which she conveys with terse believability. Andy Lau is suitably weighty in his role as the double agent Leo, while Takeshi Kaneshiro’s cocky captain, Jin, is so gorgeous the movie almost capsizes under the weight of his beauty. Seriously, for much of its running time, I was distracted, contemplating the smooth angles of his face.

Although it begins with a pomp and majesty that hints at a more wide-ranging trajectory, House of Flying Daggers slowly sizes down to this manageable love triangle. It’s an obvious play, but it threw me for a loop which I thoroughly enjoyed. Maybe due to the fact that this kind of grand romance, typical to the point of banality in Hollywood, is quite original in the context of Chinese film which, historically, has avoided pure love stories because of their pronounced individualization of characters against the ethos of approved Communist cinematic representations. In the same way that American film this past year was energizing in its unusual foray into politicism, this lustrous Chinese epic going shallow and completely a-political was actually refreshing because so rare. So I loved that in the end, though we witness the government troops approaching the House of Flying Daggers settlement, we never see the outcome of the larger battle. This narrative is in diametrical opposition to Hero, which, though it features prominently the ongoing love between my two favorite Hong Kong actors, the aforementioned Cheung as Snow and Tony Leung as Broken Sword, ends up being about the nation more than about them. House of Flying Daggers uses elaborate schemes to eventually whittle down to its focus on what, in the famous lines of another, amounts to a hill of beans, rather than the saving of the fate of the world that its predecessor attempts, and, in this case, it’s the better for it.

Watching it, I couldn’t help but simply think: this is cinema. It’s one of those movies you go to and just surrender yourself to the imagistic spectacle of, relishing it as it’s unfolding before you. D thought it was way too over-the-top melodramatic towards the end, reminding me that normally I would scoff at such theatrics, which are more apt to leave me laughing in the aisles or whispering snide comments into his ear than evoke any real feelings, but it’s a sign of how well-executed it is that, though I felt tinglings of that too, I didn’t care – I was so taken that I was willing to follow it anywhere. But I also completely understand why many were underwhelmed by it – it walks that fine line, which a viewer can fall off in either direction, into vastly distinct camps. For whatever reason, it worked for me. The lushness did what it’s supposed to do in the great classics, which is, it swept me away, transporting me to another frame of mind. Zhang Yimou’s filmmaking takes the melodrama to another plane entirely, as expressed most clearly in the final scenes where Jin and Leo fight amidst the turning-leaves of fall which then segues into a full-on winter blizzard. This elevates it to another realm, pushing beyond the boundaries to create an experience that’s meant to be unrealistic, magical and timeless, and because of this, the dramatics somehow seem perfectly in place.

The only moment that took me out of the spectacle was when Mei, in close-up, lays in the grass, her mascara totally noticeable and completely incongruous with her guerilla warrior outfit. But other than that, House of Flying Daggers was a transcendent movie encounter.

- km

Though the outside world of ‘legitimate’ publications has long since concluded its various assessments of the past year (even though we’re only half-way through month one of ‘05), before most of us have had time to finish watching the movies we think have a shot at top-ten status, not to mention a necessary percolating period, here in blogland, where consuming culture happens at a normal, slower pace, year-end rehashing continues its steady momentum with The Conversation. It’s a cyber congregation of some of the finest film-loving bloggers - Liz Penn of The High Sign, the cinetrix, Filmbrain, Out of Focus, and David Hudson of GreenCine Daily – in one space, as they inject a shot of adrenaline into a not-dead-yet horse. Using the Golden Globes (don’t forget to watch tonight, if only, like me, to see who’s wearing the best dress) as an excuse to shine their intelligently irreverent lights upon the cinematic goings-on, The Conversation seeks to emulate, even as it challenges the establishment of, Slate.com’s Movie Club. This latter’s annual round-up of the best and worst, as debated by house film critic David Edelstein (one of my personal faves), and joined by Charles Taylor and Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com (both of whose writing I like, though Zacharek is sometimes a bit too dismissively snarky for my taste), Armond White of the New York Press (who I haven’t read regularly but am intrigued by because I disagree with practically everything he says), and a slew of other big-name noteworthies, is also worth lavishing your attention on for some entertaining/enlightening back-and-forth banter. Though both scroll on for days, they’re worth it.

- km