It’s a lot to take in, is the thing. Sure, you’ve got the whole Germany and the Jews thing, but that’s so internalized into our culture that it doesn’t pack the same visceral punch. I didn’t know that yet, at this time yesterday. But, back a couple of months ago, the girl told me I should go see Hotel Rwanda. I doubt it would have crossed my mind to, on my own. This, also, is part of what there is that’s a lot to take in. So I looked for it, and kept looking for it, but it was a small distribution and was never local. Until last night, when the dear, dear Alamo Drafthouse started a three day run. I managed to escape work early enough for the run to downtown, so I got to go.

Really, there’s too much to tell about what went through my head while I was watching. It could be that there’s be too much to get it all out even if I waited a week, but I’m going to see another movie tonight, so now is the best time. Therefore, I try.

It’s a true story thing in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. The comparisons to Schindler’s List are inevitable, but I’ll try to avoid them. I haven’t seen that movie since before the events of this one actually happened, so it’s possible my memory of it is flawed. On top of which, like I said earlier: Unfamiliarity has bred a deeper reaction, maybe. As for the film elements, they’re all fine. Unobtrusive cinematography, just as I prefer. Excellent acting, never over the top despite subject matter that would all too easily create that kind of thing. A script that only crossed the preachy line once, so that’s forgivable, and it made up for it by humanizing characters that could have been too noble or too tragic or too evil.

Anyway, though, it’s a film based on a true story, and the story is probably easy to learn about, so I need not go into it here. I say probably easy to learn about, and that’s the part of what’s in my head what I will go into. I feel bad about myself, that I’d have to poke around to see how well-documented things are. I remember it happening, and sure, I was in college, but hell, that’s exactly the time I ought to have been the most fired up about it. And it barely registered. Now, it has registered. I got a little choked up looking at a billboard on the way up to Dallas today, because the subject matter reminded me of a line from the movie despite an only tenuous connection. I’m pretty sure I’ll have a nightmare sometime in the next week where a man will tell me to “Take the river road; it’s clear.” I feel bad about myself all over again for the things I thought would be pretty good ideas, for a few hours on a Tuesday in 2001.

Despite all that, I doubt my life will really change. The way I think about some things has changed, and I hope I keep that. I’m going to pay more attention, and maybe I’ll find a way to do something that would make a difference, someday. Probably not, and I won’t feel bad about that, because the main thing that makes heroes is circumstance. And no matter how I may feel about myself for never making that kind of difference, having the circumstance to allow for it would be far, far worse. That’s where the paying attention and the seeing things differently comes in, is by helping to avoid that kind of circumstance in the first place, maybe. And I can definitely get on that bus.