Jean E. Pouliot 2008-09-01
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Genocide is not pretty, but is especially ugly when it takes place in the full sight of civilized nations with a supposed historical aversion to the slaughter of innocents. But in 1993, in Rwanda, a genocide of enormous proportions occurred, unstopped by the United Nations, the United States and the rest of the world. "The Ghosts of Rwanda" tells the story of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict, using archival footage and interviews with a range of participants. The footage is raw, with many images of clusters and fields of butchered human bodies. The interviews with the-UN Secretary Madeleine Albright, UN head Kofi Annan, and UN commander Romeo D'Allaire are fascinating and maddening at the same time. D'Allaire emerges as the story's tragic figure --the man who knew what was happening and was given no latitude to do much about it. Albright and Annan (and US President Bill Clinton, seen in interviews and footage of his speeches) come across as less sympathetic, and less believable as they attempt to frame their failure to act in political terms. Other voices of those on the ground -- aid workers, reporters and locals on both sides of the divide -- provide the on-the-scenes details of how the horror unfolded.
For all the savagery of the genocide, there is a strange emotional detachment about the film. Aside from the aftermath of brutality, there is little to show of the madness and hysteria of the acts as they occurred. "Ghosts" does not capture the seething hatred and resentments that drove the murders. This might lead viewers to see Rwandan genocide as just another brutal day in a savage land. Only one victim, Valentina, evinces the lingering terror and betrayal of the period. A 12-year-old at the time, she was hacked and left for dead among the corpses of family and friends in a church used as a refuge. Only one scene -- of a white evacuee being whisked to safety past te faces of equally deserving Rwandan, visually tells the story of the abandonment of Rwanda's Tutsi's to their fate.
"Ghosts of Rwanda" is compelling and horrifying but not as moving as it needs to be to provoke the searching for the soul lost to political expediency. If the Holocaust-era slogan "Never again" had not lost it meaning in the face in the Rwandan genocide, it might be used as a rallying cry in its aftermath.
