Hotel Rwanda, 2004

Feb. 19, 2022 | COLIN BOWER

In Rwanda, there are two main ethnic groups known as the Hutu and the Tutsi. In the movie Hotel Rwanda, the two ethnic groups are not getting along and escalate into a civil war, also known as the Rwandan Genocide. Paul, a Hutu hotel manager, has a wife Tatiana, a Tutsi, and his three children. Since Paul portrays himself as a businessman, he has gone to both ethnic groups over the course of time to ask for favors and deals. For a decent amount of time, this worked and his hotel flourished, but as tensions rose, Paul needed to make a choice on what side he was going to choose. Now though Paul is a Hutu, he does not believe in the concept of picking sides, which is why he would always play the middle man. When anti-Tutsi extremists came into town, Paul felt that it was his duty to protect the Tutsi that live there. Therefore, Paul makes the hotel a safe haven for Tutsi. Obviously, the Tutsi are scared for their lives and some of the Hutu workers are hesitant about helping, Paul basically says his staff can either help or leave.

The United Nations ends up showing up to “defend” the hotel and surrounding area. The downside is that the United Nations cannot act until the government tells them to, so until they get orders, they are completely useless. Paul recognizes this and tries to call the leader out on it and the leader understands where Paul is coming from, but the leader has no drive to do anything about it. When Paul is looking at the news, he is noticing that the headlines are saying that the United Nations have come into help, but they really aren’t helping. (This is known as the credibility gap of news stations in which what's happening is not always depicted in the right way on television). Luckily, there was a reporter there that was willing to help develop a story for Paul to shock the world into understanding that an entire ethnic group is being abused and about to be wiped out and there is nothing actually being done about it. Once this segment airs, there is more aid that comes to help. This pisses off the leader of the United Nations because now he has another group of people to deal with, but progress is made to send cars of people away from the hotel and into Tutsi rebellion lines.

Meanwhile, the hotel is being constantly bombarded with extremist attacks, more and more refugees are showing up at the hotel from different safety organizations such as the Red Cross, and Paul is losing some of his connections trying to still be the middleman in everything. When the time comes, he puts his wife and kids in the car and at the last second, he stays behind without telling them. Unfortunately, they are ambushed and are forced to retreat. This makes the wife angry that Paul was going to leave them on their own, even though Paul was thinking about the hundreds of other people he was trying to save. Paul, now having no other choice, stops being a middle man and blackmails the Rwandan Army General to be tried as a war criminal for allowing this to happen. This then allows the people in the hotel to be carried away in the United Nations convoy safely behind Tutsi rebellion lines while not being ambushed. The genocide does not end there, but it is where the story ends.

Hotel Rwanda encapsulates so many moral and ethical dilemmas that can all be perceived in different ways depending on the ethical theory the movie is being perceived from. One thing about this movie that strikes me is that this is a true story, obviously twisted a little bit for the enjoyment of film, but the core of the story is all true and all happened in the Rwandan Genocide.

From the lens of Kantian Ethics, the act of bringing in thousands of people into the hotel and protecting them from extremists was in Paul’s eyes his duty, so the fact that he did that shows he is good-willed. When Paul was given the first opportunity to leave with his family, he decided that humanity needed him to stay and he sent his family off without him until they got ambushed and had to be sent back to the hotel. This action specifically goes against Kantian Ethics because Paul lied to his family that he was going to go with him, thus robbing them of their moral stability and rationalization. Overall though Paul tries to be the best person he can be, while also saving as many people as he could in the process, even if that meant going against his morals sometimes.

Additional Resources

Articles:

Bizarro, Sara, Hotel Rwanda — Kant and Moral Agency

Kassner, Joshua, The Moral Obligation to Intervene in Rwanda

Nyarenchi, F, Nyandoro, G.O. & Mecha, E., Film and the Construction of Ethnic Identity and National Difference: A Comparative Analysis of Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs and Sometimes i n April.

Ethics on Film: Discussion of "Hotel Rwanda"

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