Having returned from viewing Hotel Rwanda, I'm going to discuss some things about it, so if you plan to see the film yourself it's your choice whether to continue reading. The Oscars are tomorrow. Million Dollar Baby has my vote for Best Picture, Best Director Clint Eastwood), and Best Actress (Hilary Swank). Hotel Rwanda is next Best Picture and Actor (Paul Cheadle). Sophie Okonedo was great as Don Cheadle's (Paul) wife, Tatiana. Aviator with Leo De Caprio and Kate Blanchett is next.
In World literature, of various countries and cultures, there is a genre of survival stories. Homer's Odyssey is a survival story. Ulysses embarks on a long journey home to Ithaca from the war in Troy, the subject of the Iliad, and meets various life-threatening adventures which he is able to survive by cunning and deceit. Wily Ulysses lives by his wits, and for that we admire his ability to outwit his enemies by his endless wiles. Oh that we were so clever and brave as crafty Odysseus, to return to him his Greek name.
Arabic literature features the tales of the Arabian nights, Ali Baba and the Forty thieves. Scheherazade is the tale of the clever woman who survives by spinning a new tale each evening for a Thousand-and-One nights, to entertain the wicked king who has promised to put her to death, but has said he will spare her for as long as she keeps him fascinated by her tales, which she is forced to invent daily, to survive nightly. We so admire her for outwitting the grave threat to her life.
Queen Esther saves her people by outwitting the wicked Haman and approaching, uninvited, King Ahasuerus, commemorated by the festival of Purim.
European fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, feature the triumph of good over evil, frequently through the use of a certain amount of pulling the wool over the eyes of the bad guy, whether wolf or human.
Peter and the Wolf, of course, is a cautionary tale in which Peter's initial lies about seeing a wolf lead to the warning we all remember: "The boy who cried "Wolf!" and lived to regret it, for when really threatened, no one believed him.
The brilliant Miguel de Cervantes, in his Las Novelas Ejemplares, features blind beggars who live by their wits and their lies to fleece unsuspecting townsmen. We admire them the less because they are thieves, while giving grudging admiration for their cleverness.
We root for the clever underdog and don't care what deceptions occur.
Lying is bad, right?
Honesty is the best policy, right?
Never do anything to lose your credibility with the court, right?
I'll give you a piece of inside information. I'm not the first person to say this.
The legal system doesn't effectively deal with real liars. It works on the principle that most people tell the truth most of the time. The truth is that the bigger the lie, the better the chance that the liar gets away with it.
If lying is bad, when is it good?
How about the people who hid Anne Frank during WWII in Amsterdam. Or the Righteous Christians who hid Jews against Nazi oppression?
I've read of many instances when the right lie at the right time spared a deserving life. I've admired people who knew how to do that. Lie properly.
We've all seen someone do this effectively.
It's called "street smarts."
I was on a small craft with a friend, a couple of young ladies, plus the infant of one, when the boat approached the beach, which was a citable infraction, sailing too close.
The Police Boat approached and wanted to know what we were doing there. My male friend announced that we had a baby aboard, holding up the proof, who wasn't feeling well, so we were approaching the beach to provide him relief. The police boat backed off and sailed away.
The bit about the child not feeling well had no basis in truth, truth to tell.
I've always recalled the presence of mind of my friend in coming up with a story under pressure to resolve a sticky situation. Lying to the cops? The thought never occurred to me. I'm afraid my mother was an "honesty is the best policy" sort of person.
It's hard to say that's wrong. I've obtained more mileage from the truth as a criminal defense attorney than I know that my clients could have gained from a lie.
I had a client who shot his neighbor five times, allegedly in self-defense, paralyzing him.
"You're a good writer," he said.
He was from Italy and had read something I'd written.
"Tell me what to say when I testify," he asked.
"I don't write librettos," I told him.
He fired me.
He told a better story than any I could write.
"Ho visto le stelle," he'd told me.
"I saw stars."
That's when the neighbor hit him, the client pulled the gun, and shot the neighbor. It could be enough for a reasonable doubt.
I taught the case to the next attorney.
The next attorney walked my former client.
My client's true account of the incident was better than anything I could've written.
Incidentally, this was the only case where I went to the trouble and expense of using a mock jury to explore the issues. Twice, on two successive Saturdays, in a rented hotel conference room, with a jury consultant, and twelve good men and women, and true, hired by the consultant off the street, or some place, I presented the case, obtained a vote, and discussed what was important.
I had to present the prosecution's case and my own. I was a better prosecutor. That's why I got fired, that plus the fact that every time we came up for trial the client got cold feet.
His last continuance of trial was to get a new attorney to replace me.
Both mock juries convicted him.
I could see why he had cold feet.
My successor walked him.
But we were talking about survival skills and Hotel Rwanda, weren't we.
Hotel Rwanda is an African "Schindler's List."
Paul, the hotel manager, a Hutu, is caught up in the middle of the genocide, in which a million were slaughtered. In the movie, the Hutu are the bad guys. The Tutsi are the victims, the "cockroaches," the rebels.
I attended a talk by Bill Clinton at the Hilton in San Francisco, a benefit for the Third Baptist Church, celebrating its hundredth anniversary. He told of visiting Rwanda after the slaughter eventually stopped in 1994. He visited the new villages established to settle the million refugees and orphaned children of both peoples, Hutu and Tutsi.
The thing about it, Bill said, was that the plan of the new settlements was that both people were housed together as neighbors. Murderers next to victims. Hutu and Tutsi. They were forced to reckon with each other, and what they had done, and to learn to live together, to see each other as humans, and not as "cockroaches," the term one used for the other during the slaughter.
Hotel Rwanda is the story of Paul, the Hutu manager of a Four-Star hotel in Kigala, Rwanda, that catered to whites, international business reps, and top government officials, civilian and military, all corrupt of course. The Hutu are in control. Rebel forces are active nearby. The Hutu are wiping out the Tutsi. Many children arrive at the hotel. Tutsi children. Is Hutu Paul going to allow cockroaches to be slaughtered? This is a true story.
Paul is forced to make a choice. Outsiders would say this is a moral choice. Save the children or see them slaughtered. You can live with that on your conscience, or you can do your best.
This is such an ancient and honored story. That's why they make movies and write books about it, from Homer and Moses on down, including the tales of Arabia and India, Russia and China.
Okay, let's say we all agree that it's a good idea to engage in a bit of deception to save Anne Frank, or the names on Schindler's list, or the 1,268 Hutu and Tutsi that Paul manages, using the wiles of Ulysses, to save from massacre.
How do you come up with the right lie at the right time?
Here's what's required of you:
- You have to decide, although you don't want to, because it might cost you your life, and the life of your spouse and children, that this risk is worth taking, to save the lives of children and adults who are not your kin and not your tribe in many cases. Why are you risking yours for theirs? What sense does this make? Ask the righteous Christians who hid out Jews. Typically they have trouble saying exactly why. Expect to hear something along the order of, "What else would you do? What else could I do? How can you even ask?"
- Then you need to be intelligent; and
- To have courage; and
- To be quick of wit and tongue; and
- To be able to read the mind of the person you need to fool, to manipulate him, otherwise you die; and
- Then do it again, and again, and again.
- Until you survive and the story can be told.
That's what Hotel Rwanda is about.
This is a very difficult thing to do.
That's why they make movies about the few who succeed.
Street smarts, squared.
***
3/03/05
And speaking of survival stories, see this article (registration required) by columnist Robert W. Butler of the Kansas City Star discussing controversial issues depicted in "Million Dollar Baby." M$B won Best Picture, Hilary Swank won Best Actress and Clint Eastwood Best Director.
Butler reveals the plot line (fair warning), while pointing out the distinction between a movie depicting something that may be politically incorrect to some, and appearing to endorse one side of the issue because that's how the story comes out.
There wouldn't be cinema worth watching absent conflict on-screen (and off) over significant concerns in life.
Rights-activists of one ilk or another protest nevertheless. Butler reports:
Eastwood has responded to the talk radio criticism by noting that if you go far enough to the right you encounter “the same idiots coming around from the left.”
He deserves another Oscar just for that comment.
Bottom line: It's hard to make a movie that says something without angering someone.
[When I include a reference to a newspaper article it's because I've pulled it off Google News and read it. After I comment on it, I go back to check the link or to check a fact (such as the columnist's name), only to find that the article is no longer readable without registering. It may be that newspapers permit one free peek but impose the registration requirement thereafter from the same computer. I can go back into the article via Google News, but not via the TinyURL proxy link w/o registering. Strange.]
Glad to see Clint using a thought I've used for some time (I borrowed it, too, but from whom I have no idea), about being so far to the right one comes around the other side of the political spectrum.
Far-right Libertarians and Ultra-liberals sometimes find themselves holding hands together.
The Christian far-right supports Israel.
Go figure.
Looks like I guessed right about Million Dollar Baby, Hilary, and Clint. Good for them. Sorry about Hotel Rwanda losing out to Aviator.