Sometimes in April Reviews

A lesser-seen companion piece to Hotel Rwanda, HBO Films' Sometimes in April may be even more capable of rattling the viewer's core than its Oscar-nominated cousin. That's because where Hotel Rwanda made the artistic choice to shy away from the violence, Sometimes in April is unflinching, giving the 1994 Rwandan genocide a greater sense of visceral reality in the process. There are moments in this film when the viewer thinks "Oh no, they couldn't have really done that" -- but yes, in the process of slaughtering 800,000 in two months, marauding soldiers really did do those terrible things. Idris Elba and Pamela Nomvete lead the way with their intense performances -- as righteous as they're able to be without giving these hair-trigger thugs an excuse to spontaneously execute them. Like the most powerful cinematic depictions of tragedy are uniquely capable of doing, Sometimes in April introduces viewers to a world free from behavioral guidelines, and the chaos that results. As much as Raoul Peck's film delves into specific stories -- following a career soldier whose mixed marriage makes him a target, as well as a wounded school mistress -- the film also gives plenty of over-arching background on the decades-long clash between Hutus and Tutsis. It deftly straddles two time periods -- the immediate days and weeks of the killings, and the psychological post mortem a decade later. Where it's not particularly strong is when checking in with bureaucrats back in the U.S. (Debra Winger and Noah Emmerich), who are handcuffed by the Clinton administration's policy of non-intervention, and therefore, complicit in spite of themselves. These sections feel perfunctory. Everything else feels bold and devastatingly intimate -- appropriate for a film actually shot in Rwanda, some of it on the very hotel grounds where some Rwandans improbably found what most of their countrymen could not: refuge.