The 1994 Rwandan genocide makes you wonder about humanity. The world’s inaction reaction makes you wonder even more. And just when you think there’s no hope, along comes a man like Roméo Dallaire, someone from the West who actually showed some compassion.
Based on the book by the same title, Peter Raymont’s Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire is an unflinching documentary of the crisis that refuses to dance around the facts.
In just 100 days more than 800,000 people were slaughtered in the small African country. All the while, the rest of the world went on with their business. Just as the mass unrest between the rebel Tutsis and the Hutus came to a head, Dallaire, a Canadian Lieutenant General, was sent to Rwanda by the United Nations to head a small force to stop it. Dallaire was ill-equipped from the beginning and knew that without more troops and the go-ahead to use some force, a crisis would come from it. But the UN virtually ignored Dallaire’s warnings. The rest is one of the biggest marks against modern humanity.
Shake Hands with the Devil follows Dallaire as he returns to Rwanda nine years after the massacre. Still haunted by a feeling of guilt that he could have stopped it all before it started, director Raymont truly captures a tortured soul. Perhaps that is the reason why the film is so successful. I doubt you could find a single performance in the history of the movies so honest and horrific at the same time. Through his blank stares and saddened words, Dallaire takes those of us who overlooked the slaughter back in time and places us all in the center of it.
Dallaire, however doesn’t just blame himself. The film holds many responsible, specifically those who dragged their feet within the ranks of the UN. Special interests were at work and Rwanda apparently wasn’t a country that mattered much.
But in the end, Shake Hands with the Devil is more than finger pointing and a recap of events. By delving into Dallaire’s psyche, it becomes an emotional and poignant journey rather than a film such as Hotel Rwanda that more often than not played the role of the distant observer. The world already did that once and look where it got us.
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire Trailer
