If “Beyond the Gates” had been released before “Hotel Rwanda,” it might have attracted some of the attention that 2004 Oscar-nominated film brought to the subject of the Rwandan genocide a decade earlier.
As it is, “Beyond the Gates” tells a somewhat similar story. It’s a good movie, and the true events it depicts are shocking even if you already know about Rwanda. But it probably won’t get the acclaim of “Hotel Rwanda.”
The film takes place over the course of a few days in April 1994, after Rwanda’s president dies in a suspicious accident and the majority Hutus begin a rampage of slaughter against the minority Tutsis.
At the Ecole Technique Officielle, a Catholic-run school, a United Nations force is hunkered down, their mandate to merely “monitor” the situation. When hundreds of terrified citizens pour into the school’s gates, the U.N. troops become their protectors.
As the situation becomes more dangerous, the absurdities approach “Catch-22” levels. French military aid arrives, but only to evacuate Europeans. The U.N. troops are forbidden to fire at the murderers around them, yet at one point they shoot the dogs that are eating the corpses nearby … because the dogs might create a health hazard. (Thus the film’s original title, harsher but much better than the current one: “Shooting Dogs.”)
We see this largely through the eyes of two white men: Father Christopher (John Hurt, spiritual and almost unearthly), and Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy), a young English do-gooder who teaches at the school. The latter sees his idealistic notions ripped to shreds during the violence (he’s otherwise a pretty vague character).
These characters are fictional, but the events are factual. The U.N. troops did in fact hold the rioting Hutus at bay at the Ecole Technique Officielle, for a few days. And then the troops left.
Co-writer David Belton, who was a reporter in Rwanda in 1994, based the character of Father Christopher on a real-life priest he knew. More importantly, director Michael Caton-Jones (“Rob Roy”) decided to shoot the film on the locations where the events actually happened, including the Ecole Technique Officielle. This aids the movie’s sober sense of purpose.
The Rwandan genocide remains an extremely important subject for the world to ponder, not least on the issue of the United Nations or the United States intervening in human-rights catastrophes. This film does a dramatic job of raising those points.
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