If you’ve already checked into the “Hotel Rwanda,” then you may not want to check out “Beyond the Gates.”
The latest segment of the story of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, just now being released theatrically after premiering at 2005’s Toronto Film Festival (originally titled “Shooting Dogs”), is no less valuable than Don Cheadle’s preceding version for memorializing the martyrs of a hideous tragedy — one allowed at least in part by international ignorance and indifference.
But it’s sometimes a problem to recommend film drama that is well-made about an issue of immense social import that treads territory that is not only unsurprising but also ugly and painful. Sitting through “Beyond the Gates” is an exercise in bracing yourself for the inevitable, of forcing yourself to watch while innocents prepare to be literally hacked to death en mass by their fellow countrymen’s machetes. They can make hundreds of thousands of films on it, which would roughly amount to a film per victim, but there would still be no further understanding of why some human beings are capable of utterly guiltless, even gleeful viciousness.
As competently if unspectacularly directed by Michael Caton-Jones and written by David Wolstencroft, “Gates” was filmed on the actual locations of its fact-based events. It also used a crew with some of the very few survivors to add authentic power to this account of a Rwandan school campus and U.N. encampment which attempted to shelter some 2500 Tutsi minority refugees escaping the raping and murdering mobs of the Hutu majority.
The same topics come up repeatedly in these sagas of modern African oppression and devastation. There’s been a plethora of high-profile ones lately, too. “Hotel Rwanda,” “Last King of Scotland” and “Blood Diamond” — like today’s entry — address the costs of racism, poverty, greed, political corruption and violence while holding up hope by lionizing brave, defiant heroes.
In “Gates,” alas, two white men at the school are painted as the heroes of a distinctly black historical moment. Catholic priest Father Christopher (played with resolve by great thespian showman John Hurt) and teacher Joe Connor (earnest cutie Hugh Dancy) will be moved to offer, respectively, religious comfort and morale boosting to the refugees as the noose of the surrounding machete-wielding militias ever tightens. Meanwhile, the U.N. forces there — representing us, the supposed civilized world — do nothing to stop the slaughter.
These sad, infuriating events aren’t exactly the stuff of a great Saturday night out at the movies. But on cable TV one night, you might want to choose to be a witness to “Beyond the Gates.”
‘Beyond the Gates’
3/5 stars
Starring: John Hurt, Hugh Dancy, Claire-Hope Ashitey
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Rated R for strong violence, distrurbing images and language
