'Gates' revisits moral quandary in Rwanda

This harrowing look at the 1994 genocide goes beyond documentary to delve into an ethical dilemma.

from the March 16, 2007 edition

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David Belton, one of the film's producers, was working for the BBC in Rwanda in 1994. This may help to explain the authenticity of the project, which was directed by Michael Caton-Jones in Rwanda hiring survivors of the massacre for small roles. The end credits show us still photos of some of them paired with descriptions of their devastating losses, and dwarfs the dramatizations that came before.

The obscenity of the slaughter is compounded by the fact that the West, and the UN in particular, did almost nothing to prevent the massacre of almost a million Rwandans. In one of the most unsettling sequences, UN commander Captain Delon orders the dogs tearing into the corpses outside the school's gates to be shot. But because the UN has not officially ruled what is happening in Rwanda as genocide, he refuses to shoot the Hutu machete wielders even though they have also massacred 10 Belgian soldiers.

At one dire point in the movie, a white BBC newswoman (Nicola Walker) who covered Sarajevo tells Joe that the massacre of whites there was more upsetting to her than the genocide of Rwandans. Caton-Jones and his screenwriter David Wolstencroft don't need to underline the point for us: Skin color played a part in the West's criminal neglect.

I wish "Beyond the Gates" had been more detailed in its political indictments and less eager to portray all Tutsis as saints. Although the events depicted are harrowing, the filmmaking and storytelling are fairly conventional. But in some ways the movie's straightforward style is more appropriate to the horror than a more souped-up approach would have been. With material this strong, sometimes the best thing a filmmaker can do is to stay out of the way. Grade: A–

• Rated R for strong violence, disturbing images, and language.

Violence: 21. Language: 10 strong uses and 9 milder ones. Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco: 10.

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