Customer Reviews

Sometimes in April

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
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HBO continues to make exceptional films that should be seen in theaters and Sometimes in April is no exception. Without sensationalizing the violence of the Hutus against the Tutsis in 1994, director/writer Raoul Peck nonetheless dramatizes the horror of the mass murder that took place in Rwanda.

One scene in particular illustrates the contrast of vicious Hutu army killers with the heroism of their victims. The Hutu army has stormed a Christian Preparatory School for girls and found a young black teacher with fifty or so of her students hiding in a large classroom space. The army officer demands that the Hutus among the girls step away from their classmates, not knowing that the girls have already decided to stay together and support each other. The officer becomes frustrated with the rejection of his order and opens fire with his men killing all but three of the young women.

Time and again cowardly, machete wielding Hutu thugs are confronted with the heroism of their victims. Hutu radio has characterized all Tutsis as "cockroaches" and exhorts all Hutus to completely eliminate them from society. In a little over three months over a million Tutsis and their Hutu supporters are brutally murdered.

How could the world, and in particular we in the United States, have watched with indifference? The answer seems to be that Rwanda is a poor, small country in the center of Africa with no strategic or commercial importance to anyone. Debra Winger plays the part of a key Washington official who tries to persuade the government to intervene, but with little or no support from anyone.

At the heart of Sometimes in April is the story of a captain in the Hutu army who has a Tutsi wife and three children. This young officer experiences the tragedy of the genocide as he attempts to protect his family against the stupidity and evil that engulf his country. The fact that he is Hutu and an outstanding officer with a fine record makes no difference in determining the fate of his family or anyone else with Tutsi blood.

Sometimes in April is an outstanding film that is sure to be in contention for honors as one of the best movies in 2005. Those viewers unable to see this film on HBO are encouraged to get the DVD. They will not be disappointed.

Sometimes In April is a shocking portrayal of the lives of Rwandan survivors Augustine Muganza (excellently played by Idris Elba) and Sister Martine (talented Pamela Nomvete). While lacking the flair of Hotel Rwanda, `Sometimes' makes up for flash with brutal reality of the atrocities committed in 1994.

The movie bounces back and forth between the genocide in 1994 and 2004, when Augustine's brother Honore is on trial for his involvement with the genocide through his radio broadcasts on RTLM "Hutu Radio" show. Honore was a journalist who got caught up in the propaganda he spewed out over the airwaves, until the violence comes to his own family.

In 2004, Augustine is with Martine, and the movie goes backward in time from Honore's trial to document the horrors that both Augustine and Martine survived. This made for HBO movie is much more graphic than theater-released Hotel Rwanda, brutally shoving into your face the mass murder of innocent catholic schoolgirls, horrific testimony from a mother who was tortured and raped for days on end, and the callus indifference of the westernized world.

"It's just Rwandans killing Rwandans," says one official. "We have no oil, no dams, there is nothing in Rwanda for you," says Rwandan militia member, encouraging the US to stay out of the genocide. Equally as appalling as the mass murders are real-clips from Prudence Bushnell as she coldly described how the US classified Genocide, and all the political back-speak as the western nations tried to cover their impassiveness with words while one million human beings died.

Sometimes In April is a powerful, must-see movie, but not for the squeamish or feint of heart. It is brutal, and reminds us to "Never Forget". Expertly directed by Raoul Peck and filled with unknown but very talented actors, `Sometimes' will grab your attention and not let you go until the end. I did find the movie a bit hard to follow at times with the time-jumps, but not overwhelmingly so. Horrifically good movie with realistic portrayal. Enjoy!

The gruesome tragedy of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 absolutely must become public knowledge if we are to maintain the watch for symptoms of similar acts in the present and the future. HOTEL RWANDA was a fine film that capitalized on the heroism of one man, and justly so, for his selfless vision that saved many lives. But as far as a film that relates the same story without the emphasis on one hero, SOMETIMES IN APRIL is for this reviewer more powerful: the genocide speaks more loudly because it focuses on the victims.

Writer/Director Raoul Peck has created a stunning impact with this film made for HBO. The details of the history of the rebellion of the Tutsis against the Hutus is clearly explained and made far more understandable than in previous efforts. Peck wisely utilizes the talents of Idris Elba and Carole Karemera as the husband and wife of mixed marriage and it is their story of survival and witness that makes this examination of Rwanda so intense. Oris Erhuero and Debra Winger among others feel completely committed to this story in the way they bring honesty and credibility to their roles.

Photographed on location, this film is at first a country beautiful to look at and then the beauty of the land filled with corpses is nearly unbearable. The contrast is typical of the way Raoul Peck has sculpted this important film. By Hollywood standards as well as by Public Information standards, this is a film that should be seen by everyone as not only a fine movie but also an important documentation of a tragedy that should have never been ignored. Grady Harp, April 05

While Hotel Rwanda has certainly received more press than Sometimes in April, I think this film stands on it's own as an accurate and gritty account of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994.

With the exception of the U.S. Government scenes, Sometimes in April is exteremely well acted. It is certainly bloodier and more violent than Hotel Rwanda and it portays the terror of the situation in a more matter-of-fact manner. One has a real feeling of dread and tension watching this film.

I really feel one should watch both movies as they compliment one another tremendously.

Genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group

It's not easy to watch a movie about genocide. It's not even easy to hear news accounts of these kind of atrocities but that doesn't mean they shouldn't make these kinds of movies. No, by all means, horrific brutality and indifference to life should be memorialized. The perpetrators should be shown for what they are, young, idle, power hungry, sociopaths, not unlike the street gangs and terrorists we presently face.

The Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide killed almost a million Rwandans of both Tutsi and Hutu ancestry(?) The Hutus outnumbered the Tutsis by almost six to one but had historically been subservient socially and economically to the Tutsis.

There is really very little difference between the tribes who share a common language and history and had gotten along well and been intermarrying for four hundred years. Physical differences had almost disappeared totally when Belgian colonialists, who had taken over the country from Germany after the First World War, started categorizing the population as either Tutsi or Hutu based on their version of physical traits. Still even though arbitrarily ethnically divided, the newly defined Huts and Tutsis got along fairly well, even though the Tutsis were the Belgian darlings and had been put in charge, via a monarchy.

This changed in the sixties when the sister countries of Rwanda and Burundi received their independence. Hutus outnumbering the Tutsis took control of the government and lashed out at their oppressors, killing thousands and sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring countries. Eventually a group of Tutsi ex-patriots decided to take their country back by forming the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) and invading Rwanda in 1990.

This set the stage for the murder and mayhem of Tutsi and so called collaborating Hutus, including the systematic slaughter of innocent women and children which took place in the spring of 1993. This is the setting for one man's story in the movie Sometimes in April

I cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like to go through something like this, yet thousands of survivors must have witnessed or heard about their wives, husbands, brothers, mothers, sisters, fathers, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, in laws or friends butchered like vermin. There was no mercy, no humanity, no hesitation, only grim determination to wipe out all vestiges of the Tutsi tribe from Rwanda.

Our hero, Augustin (Idris Alba)- I really don't know whether to call him a hero but being a Hutu and former soldier, on the run from fellow Hutus, made him seem like one - lost his entire family and his best friend to the madness that was present in that spring in 1993. His brother Honore, (Oris Erhuero) was complicit in the rampage as a radio personality exhorting and inciting the mobs that roamed the streets and countryside of Rwanda but he got to see the results of his evil deeds first hand, while trying to perform his only good deed, witnessed the murder of his two nephews. His sister in law was wounded and he later managed to get her to church refuge, where she later died.

Augustin, after seeing his friend Lionel shot to death in front of him, manages to find safe haven in a hotel (Not the hotel in Hotel Rwanda but didn't know his families whereabouts. He later finds and starts to take care of Jeanne, (Carole Karemera)the woman who tried to save his daughter, both of whom were part of a mass gunning in the Catholic school she attended. Eventually in the present time Augustin finds out from his brother, jailed in neighboring Tanzania, what befell the rest of his family.

The story was told from present time with Augustin reflecting back to his ordeal. Saying there was a story is probably a misnomer. The story in the early part was denial, escape, helplessness, hide, resolve, hunt, terror, cruelty, kill, finality, death, SURVIVE and in the latter part anguish, melancholy, memories, hope, loss of hope, apathy, move on, SURVIVE.

Conclusion

This movie was a colossal downer, though the story did need to be told and viewed. It lasts some two hours and twenty minutes but it never dragged. The film moved along well and held my interest the whole time. I thought the director, Raoul Peck, did a magnificent job and even though this was a made for TV (HBO) movie it never seemed low budget. The acting was nothing short of sensational. The fear was palpable as was the anxiety and other emotions.

As you might imagine hundreds if not thousands of actors participated on both sides of the line dividing good and evil. I couldn't get over the cavalier attitude of the young executioners, their total disregard for life. I noticed they kept referring to their victims as snakes or cockroaches as if calling them that made them less then human and made them feel more like exterminators. I'm sure this is the mindset that took place in all previous genocides and the current extermination going on in Dafur, Sudan.

It's shocking the extent of indifference in our country to situations in nations that don't rest on our borders or house our greed-feeding resources. The Rwandan genocide of 1994, the extermination -- for the Hutus referred to their Tutsi brothers as "cockroaches" -- of close to a million people over the course of 100 days, is perhaps the most incredible and disgusting event in modern civilization. But who remembers it as well as Kurt Cobain's suicide which was discovered the same day as speculation that a civil war had broken out in some country and between two peoples nobody had ever heard of? Seemingly worse than Nazi extermination in its pure senselessness; more akin to the Bosnian-Serb split on fast forward. It would be as if Nazi Germany had divided its Jewish population into two classes and let them slaughter one another -- that's what Belgium effectively did when it divided Rwanda into two camps. "Sometimes in April," named for the month in which the carnage took place, is a haunting view from the inside told through the eyes of a Hutu soldier with a Tutsi wife who is himself in danger and loses his wife, three children and watches his best friend killed in the process. In fact, he loses everyone in his circle save one: his brother, who over the radio helps fuel the Hutu propoganda machine, and who 10 years later wants to own up to his crime, while trying to reconcile with his brother. The docudrama, which spares no detail of the horror of those 100 days, is interspersed with political tiddlywinks here in the U.S. in which, when hundreds of thousands are known to be dead, the talking heads aren't even able to agree whether the term "genocide" applies -- and which leaves one ultimately wondering: What if they had been white Christian families?

I loved this movie. I found it more powerful than "Hotel Rwanda", partly because it was filmed on the spot, right where the events took place 10 years ago.

The main actors were great, although not Rwandese themselves, particularly the first male caracter who acted brillantly. I wasn't so convinced by the actress who played a teacher and his girlfriend though, perhaps because she didn't look or speak much like a Rwandese.

The director took a meticulous care at depicting people and re-enacting events where they took place. Having visited Rwanda and Uganda, I was particularly moved by this story ( and I could see and smell all the colors and scents of Africa, which are still so vivid in my memory. Such as the smell of the earth when rain is falling... ) You can catch the beauty of Eastern Africa, and perhaps have a glimpse at what politics there look like...

The relationship between poor African nations such as Rwanda and the rest of the world hasn't changed much since the genocide, although a lot of efforts have been put to let us think otherwise. More than any other movie or documentary made on the subject, the director succeeded well in showing the hypocrisy of politicians and bureaucrats in the West, who matched but did nothing as thousand of lives were savagely murdered.

On the other hand, there was not enough emphasis perhaps on the political climate prior to the genocide. The disparity between rich and poor, the fact that power usually lays in the hands of a dominating and ruling tribe, are just one of the few reasons which can explain this massacre. This alone cannot lead to war. The complexity of politics in this part of the world can maybe be told in another movie?

This 2005 HBO film made me think of Hotel Rwanda. Both films are about a middle class family with a Hutu husband and Tutsi wife who are caught up in the Rwandan massacre. But unlike Hotel Rwanda, the characters in "Sometimes in April" do not fare as well and the violence is all front and center, not somewhere offstage in order to make the film more palatable for Western audiences. The characters are also more complex which makes the story more compelling.

When the film opens, it is 2004 and it is raining, as it always does in April. Augustin, played by Idris Elba, remembers back 10 years, when his life changed forever by the events around him. Now, he lives in a nice house with a woman who, at first we think is his wife. She is pregnant with his child but they are not married. He is still wearing his wedding ring from his former marriage and it is difficult for him to move on to marry this new woman. There is a letter waiting for him which he is reluctant to read. It is from his brother who is on trial for genocide and who he has not seen for 10 years. He brother, played by Oris Erhuero, was a journalist who had a radio program. It was this radio program and the voice of his brother who spurred the Hutus on to murder. Although his brother never personally murdered anyone, his guilt is being decided by a tribunal, of which Debra Winger is one of the prosecutors.

Much of the film is a flashback to 1994. Once Augustin had a happy family and once he even thought he would be immune to the violence because he was in the Army. But this didn't happen. And the audience is now exposed to scene after scene of the violence which made me shudder in a way that Hotel Rwanda did not. It also made the two brothers very real and conflicted human beings who lived through a time where hard choices had to be made constantly. It is not a pretty picture, and it certainly is not about a hero who triumphantly saved his people. There is short scene in the film set in a hotel where the guests used the water in the pool to survive. This scene was played out in detail in Hotel Rwanda and also in a recent novel I read called "A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali " so I can only assume that this particular incident is based on fact. But most of the film was set in other places - in a Catholic girls school which Agustin's daughter attended, at the many roadblocks where citizens were murdered unmercifully, in a church where many tried to get refuge, in the swamps where dead were dumped and the living tried to survive. And, of course, at the tribunal itself which is trying to look for individuals to blame.

The two women in Augustin's life also had hard choices to make. And each of them performed heroic acts to save others. Pamela Nomvete Marimbe was a teacher in a school when the soldiers came. Carole Karemera is the wife who lost all memory of the acts committed on her family and later saved others by an heroic act of self sacrifice of her one. I was moved by their courage during this unspeakable time.

All of the actors playing Rwandans were excellent. I can't say the same for the actors playing U.N. inspectors, whose performances tended to be wooden. However, I think this might have been by design of the director and in no way changed the way I felt about this film. Too bad it was only shown on HBO and never got to the big screen. However, it is available on DVD. It is more than just a story about Rwanda. It is a story about brother, about family and about how people act when the unspeakable changes their lives forever.

Highly recommended. But certainly not for the squeamish.

In all my 30 years in existence I have never seen anything such as this; nothing I can think of can explain the elegance of this film. I once thought being human meant something until I watched this film and realized just how weak being human can be. Even though these are events of the past, the way they have been told in the present shed a new light on the subject. Unlike other stories told of genocides and massacres, this story was told of a place and of people with no value to the world around it. For that reason a film of this nature will not make the front page of your weekly release circular. For those of you who can see past the red tape, please hold on to this film, and see more than just the story it self.This film is a work of art on a new scale, and should be viewd the same.

This movie is truly excellent. The detail in this movie is heart wrenching at times, but it gives you a indepth look at the slaughter that took place in the Rwandan Genocide. The sad part is to watch all the world super powers and aide organizations stand by while innocent people were being slaughtered because of a seperation created by the white colonist.... and did nothing....absolutely nothing.