Dir: Michael Caton-Jones, US/Ger, 2005, 115 mins
Cast: John Hurt, Hugh Dancy, Dominique Horowitz, Claire-Hope Ashitey
Review by Philippa Bradnock
Shooting Dogs dramatises the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 when extremist Hutus (the majority ethnic group) attacked and murdered minority Tutsis. Between April and July the film tells us 800,000 Rwandans were killed. The film is based on the true story of a priest run school which sheltered Tutsis and moderate Hutus as well as housing UN soldiers stationed there. Joe Connor (Dancy) – a generic everyman name if ever there was one – is a fresh-faced young Brit recently arrived to do his middle class bit by teaching in the school. Father Christopher (Hurt) is the wise old priest who’s seen it all before in ’73 but finds himself horrified by the slaughter.
Shooting Dogs is the latest in the recent stream of Western films about African atrocity. Last year Hotel Rwanda raised questions about why Americans are so keen on telling African stories by casting their own nationals as natives. Before that the bombast of Black Hawk Down exposed an ongoing desire to recast Western failure and the legacy of colonialism as unrelated to the troubled present of many African countries.
Caton-Jones’ film comes from a story co-written by a BBC correspondent who witnessed the start of the massacre. This journalistic instinct emerges in the inclusion of the film’s most insightful white character, Rachel (Nicola Walker), a BBC correspondent. It is also evident in the apparent desire to expose the extent of the Rwandan government’s complicity and the international community’s responsibility for the genocide. Against this real world complexity Joe functions to hook us in, as if we can’t respond to human tragedy without a good-looking white male in charge.
Unfortunately much of the scripting, acting and characterisation of the drama based scenes is pretty wobbly. Dancy struggles earnestly for a sincerity that he never quite grasps and his lines have all the naturalness of a school play. But what can one do when faced with the necessity of saying ‘no worries, love. God bless.’ in a cut glass accent? Hurt mumbles platitudes about love and God and really only comes alive when he has to shout. Horwitz’s Belgian UN commander fares little better, smoking in a Gallic way and producing historical parallels on demand.
The film’s strength lies in the reality underpinning the drama. It is a shocking reminder of the staggering privilege accorded to those whose skin is pink instead of brown. The most moving scenes here are not the dewy eyed reproaches of star pupil Marie (Claire-Hope Ashitey) when she fears Joe will leave. Instead, there is a gut wrenching sequence when the French army turns up with only two trucks and proceeds to load up the white refugees, previously ensconced in school offices ‘with facilities’ instead of outside with everyone else. The white faces pushing through a black crowd to safety eloquently make the film’s underlying points about the colonial legacy and the ongoing racial divide. There is chilling archive footage of the Spokeswoman for the US State Department debating the semantic niceties of ‘acts of genocide’ or just plain ‘genocide’, where the latter would have incurred an obligation on the international community to intervene. The UN conveniently preferred the former to describe the events in Rwanda. And there is the friendly hand waving of Joe’s acquaintance Francois at a roadblock, a gesture made with the hand that isn’t holding the machete. These moments cut through the story with absolute clarity, and I felt that at times the dramatic narrative served to blunt and obstruct this rather than to facilitate it.
Shooting Dogs is an admirable film and one which seems to give more of a voice to those involved than many similar past productions. Before the final credits we see shots of Rwandans who worked on the production and the staggering numbers of people they ‘lost’ during the genocide. It is clearly intended to be popular cinema and aimed at an audience which knows only a little of the genocide. Drama and real life events often do not mix well cinematically, there can be a lumpen quality to the characters who have to bear the weight of the film’s cause. This does happen in Shooting Dogs, but its message and some striking scenes carry it nevertheless and the imbalance of the drama does not topple the whole.
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