March 17-23, 2005

movies

April Reign

man to man: Augustin (Idris Elba, center) argues with fellow Hutus.

Raoul Peck's shattering docudrama outstrips Hotel Rwanda's pat catharsis.

by Sam Adams

The comparison with Hotel Rwanda is inevitable, which is a shame, even though Sometimes in April comes out ahead in every respect. Raoul Peck's shattering docudrama, which has its premiere on HBO Saturday, deserves to stand on its own.

The movies, which restage the Rwandan genocide which erupted in April 1994, have their similarities large and small, creating a kind of echo effect: When April's Augustin (Idris Elba), a captain in the Hutu army, goes to Kigali's Hotel Mille Collines to look for his wife, you half-expect Don Cheadle's Paul Rusesabagina to round the corner. Like Hotel Rwanda, Peck's movie is told from the point of view of a middle-class family man, whose first hint of the slaughter to come is the sight of his neighbors being pulled from their houses. Both movies allude to the fact that Rwandan Hutus, who had been subjugated to the minority Tutsi under Belgian colonial rule, had their hatred stoked by racist radio broadcasts, although April approaches the situation more directly by making Augustin's brother Honoré (Oris Erhuero) one of the broadcasters.

Given that the movies deal with the same events, the overlap is not surprising. It's the differences that tell. Hotel Rwanda's protagonist is essentially guiltless, condemned only by his initial failure to act, and his service job makes him literally and metaphorically accessible to white audiences. By contrast, we first see Sometimes in April's Augustin drilling civilians in the use of machetes, although he immediately expresses doubts to his friend Xavier (Fraser James) about the reliability of the Interhamwe militia. Implicated by blood and his own complicity, Augustin is hardly a hero. After the killing starts, he and Xavier are pulled from their car by the Interhamwe, who have heard Xavier's name broadcast as a Hutu "traitor." Guns drawn, the militiamen hand Augustin a machete and order him to execute his friend; while he's obviously sickened by the prospect, he makes to comply, saved only by a militiaman's bullet. The scene's contained horror recalls the master's touch of Schindler's List. Peck, best known for his feature and documentary profiles of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, pulls up to the edge of the abyss, then backs off just enough to let us know we've been spared the worst.

Though Peck obviously recognizes the value of conventional historical drama, he knows its limitations. The focus on a few central characters gives the viewer an emotional entry point, and Peck certainly wants us to feel as much as think. But the movie avoids any neat catharsis and does so with the subconscious sense that the real-life story ends when the movie does. (In an argument with a friend, I sarcastically muttered something about Hotel Rwanda's "happy ending," and she said, "It does have a happy ending.") Augustin and his family may be Sometimes in April's center, but they're hardly its only focus. More importantly, despite the movie's title, Peck doesn't contain his story to a single time period. The killing goes on, week after week, month after month, as the onscreen titles charting the hundreds of thousands killed continue to mount.

Even more critically, Sometimes in April doesn't limit its story to the events of 1994. The movie begins, in fact, on its 10th anniversary: April 7, 2004, the national day of remembrance. Augustin is now a teacher, and his brother Honoré is in prison in Tanzania, awaiting his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal. Augustin's wife is dead, although only his brother knows how she died, and they haven't spoken in nearly 10 years. In Tanzania, Augustin recalls not only the genocide but the immediate moments before his trip, including the latest in a long line of fights with his girlfriend, Martine (Pamela Nomvete). The love between them is obvious, as is the reason for their estrangement. Augustin is still haunted, not only by the deaths of his wife and children but by his own behavior and his country's festering wounds.

At the ICT, Augustin listens as his brother admits his guilt, and he converses through his motel room's paper-thin walls with a woman who is scheduled to testify about her rape and torture. Even if only a few men are sentenced, he tells Martine on the phone, the process is an important one. Still, it seems to bring him little comfort. At the same time in Rwanda, we see the country's own version of justice: the Gacaca tribunals, where villagers gather in the open air to confront the men who killed their loved ones face to face.

Although Sometimes in April occasionally cuts away to Washington, where Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Prudence Bushnell (Debra Winger) labors vainly against the perception that U.S. intervention could result in "another Mogadishu," the movie doesn't compromise its African perspective. Hotel Rwanda may end with its protagonist safely crossing the border, but Peck's decade-spanning approach underlines the problems that befall those who remain. During a heated phone conversation, Martine asks Augustin the movie's most important question: "How are we going to move forward?" Peck doesn't provide an answer. He's clear that it will have to come from the Rwandans themselves, if only because no one else is likely to respond.

Sometimes in April Written and directed by Raoul Peck Premieres Sat., March 19, 8 p.m., HBO

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