FILM COMMENT HOME
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BUY THE NEW ISSUE!
ART
& INDUSTRY BY AMY TAUBIN
ONLINE EXCLUSIVES
SIGN UP FOR
E-NEWS
FORUM
ARCHIVE
FILMLINC.COM
HOME
10. ART & INDUSTRY
by Amy Taubin
100 Days
Raoul Peck's Sometimes in April
The devil's in the details. The most indelible moment in Sometimes in April, Raoul Peck's real-life horror film about the Rwandan genocide, occurs when one of a straggly bunch of Hutus, out on a Tutsi killing spree, leans down without breaking step to sharpen his machete on the paving stones. You can avert your eyes from images of bloodletting or defend against them by telling yourself that these are merely actors and the red stuff a prop-person's mixture. But this scraping sound ? like that of a butcher preparing his blade ? catches you off guard. It makes your hair stand on end even before you quite grasp what it portends. Don't bother turning down the volume on the TV; it's already playing back ? scrape, scrape, scrape ? in your head. The machete is the primary implement of Rwandan agriculture, but during the genocide it was used to cut down humans. Over 800,000 were murdered in 100 days beginning on April 6, 1994.
Unlike Hotel Rwanda, which focused on the extraordinary heroism of Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) and thus sent people out of the theater with a sense of uplift, Sometimes in April takes as its protagonist a well-meaning Hutu army officer with a troubling capacity for denial. Augustin Muganza (Idris Elba) refuses to believe that a bloodbath is imminent until it is too late for him to save his Tutsi wife, their two children, and his best friend from the slaughter. It doesn't diminish the specificity of the Rwandan genocide or the vast historical, political, and cultural differences between a small, post-colonial, African country and the United States to say that Augustin's denial is a point of identification. The question is not simply "would I have acted differently had I been his shoes," but "am I manifesting a similar denial right now vis-?-vis the collapse of U.S. democracy and the perhaps irreversible destruction of the planet's ecosystem." Not to mention that while I toy with the possibility of moving to Canada, the latest genocide continues in Darfur.
As he did in Lumumba, Peck has made a film that asks us to think about history and politics in the third world and how we, first-world subjects of filthy rich, putatively democratic regimes, are implicated in them. The HBO website (HBO produced the film and will continue to cable-cast it throughout May as well as release the DVD) has some excellent supplementary materials including a stark timeline of the genocide (with the U.N. and the U.S. quibbling, just as they are now in Darfur, about whether what is taking place is genocide or merely "acts of genocide") and descriptions of the production process. Shot on location in Rwanda, Sometimes in April employed thousands of locals as cast and crew. Much of the film's gravity and grace comes from the fact that the people onscreen are acting out their own national tragedy ? they are showing us what happened and trying to make sense of it themselves before our eyes. No one could mistake anyone in this film for a mere "extra." Some had experienced the genocide firsthand. Peck explains in an interview (also on HBO's website) that they were always pushing him to go further, to do another take. They told him, "Don't worry, we have time to cry. But the rest of the world has to know this story." Perhaps the most devastating scene in the film depicts the massacre of a group of schoolgirls, at a French Catholic school, left behind with their Rwandan teacher when the European nationals are evacuated. The Hutu girls refuse to betray their Tutsi classmates, so the marauders shoot all of them together.
Sometimes in April is structured as a Cain and Abel story. Augustin is the good brother, who like the "good Germans," couldn't believe his fellow countrymen had become murderers until they knocked on his door. His brother, Honore (Oris Erhuero) is a hate-radio DJ who agitates for the extermination of the Tutsi "insects." Ten years after the genocide, Honore is on trial for war crimes and he asks Augustin to visit him. The film segues back and forth between the 100 days of slaughter and 2004, when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was held in Tanzania. The more reflective present-day scenes put the brakes on our emotional responses to the scenes of the genocide, and prevent the film from degenerating into exploitation. Peck is often criticized for being a didact, but the brilliance of Sometimes in April is its engagement of both hearts and minds.
© 2005 by Amy Taubin
