Beyond the Gates
What would you risk to make a difference?
Based on real events and shot entirely on location, Beyond the Gates (released in the UK as Shooting Dogs) is a film of the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
In 1994, after 30 years of persecution of the minority Tutsi people by the majority Hutu government and, under pressure from the West, the Hutu president had reluctantly agreed to share power with the Tutsis. The UN has deployed a small force around Kigali, the capital, to monitor the fragile peace.
The film itself is set in the Ecole Technique Officielle where Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy) is working as a teacher. Also based at the school is a contingent of Belgian UN troops and Father Christopher (John Hurt), a Catholic priest who runs the school and who has been here for long enough to become an established part of the community.
It all starts idealistically enough. Connor feels he’s fitting in and making a difference and he’s enjoying the cheerful chaos of Kigali and the random pace of life around him.
There are hints that all is not right, however, and foreshadowing’s of the impending disaster, but neither Father Christopher nor Joe Connor are able to fully comprehend the scale of the ethnic divide. Nor are they able to understand quite what is being planned.
And then the Rwandan President is killed.
In the ensuing confusion, people start arriving at the gates of the school, seeking the protection of the UN. And it’s now that the European characters find themselves face to face with the unfolding horror as Hutu militias turn on their Tutsis neighbours, and just how little the UN troops’ mandate allows them to do.
The film is packed with genuinely painful moments, all of which serve to bring home the atrocious state of affairs, but it is the understated nature of the script that really brings home the enormity of the events. Not grandstanding, and by focussing on a few characters and how they are affected by the events, as the film moves to its appalling yet inevitable climax, gives the film a real punch.
When the film was released in the UK, there were some criticisms of the fact that the main characters in this film about Rwanda are all white. However, in this case, I think that writer, David Wolstencroft was right to tell the story through this prism, if only because it allows him to tell the story through characters that are as clueless as the rest of us.
Joe Connor – the young idealist, completely out of his depth - is clearly the character with which we, as an audience, are expected to identify. But what really holds it all together is John Hurt’s superbly ambiguous performance as a conflicted priest confronting the horror unfolding around him as best he is able. He really does provide a real soul to this unusually thoughtful film.
Beyond the Gates is a film about Rwanda, but it’s also about the way in which the international community stood back and let the massacres happen. It’s a film about the way in which the UN weaselled out of acknowledging that a genocide was happening in order to avoid having to take any action, and tying the hands of their troops on the ground in the process.
It’s one of the most powerfully moving and emotionally draining films I’ve seen in a very long time. If you see nothing else this year, watch this film.
Wednesday 07 Mar 2007 | Paul Pritchard | Drama
