Demagogue

During the interview with Romeo Dallaire that I mentioned in my "Daily Darfur" post, he is asked about Nick Nolte's portrayal of "Colonel Oliver" in "Hotel Rwanda."

He is not pleased

Nick Nolte is getting a lot of flak for his preposterous rendition of you in Hotel Rwanda. Have you seen the movie yet?

No. I've been given a DVD, I'll have to see it before Sundance. It sounds like Mr. Nolte did a fine job of playing himself. If they're going to have someone play me and they know I'm alive and kicking, they should have at least touched base. Mr. Nolte never talked to me. Nobody from the film did. I feel slighted by that. And the fact he portrays a freewheeling, drinking type of guy is so foreign to the reality. When we were there, we weren't involved with booze, I'll tell you.

Now, I respect Gen. Dallaire a great deal, but he might want to see the film before he starts criticizing Nolte's portrayal. I thought Nolte did a fine job and Colonel Oliver came off as a passionate and heroic but frustrated leader abandoned by the United Nations and the international community.

The scene that seems to have caused the most controversy takes place outside the hotel. Foreign troops have arrived to evacuate their nationals and when Oliver learns that the Rwandans are to be abandoned, he stalks off and Paul Rusesabagina follows him into the hotel bar, where he offers him some scotch. It is at this point that Oliver tells Paul that the West will not be coming to their rescue and says

"You should spit in my face. You're dirt. We think you're dirt, Paul ... The West, all the superpowers ... They think you're dirt. They think you're dung ... You're not even a nigger. You're African."

It is a moving scene and one Nolte infuses with dignity and outrage.

The Colonel Oliver character does not come off as a freewheeling, hard-drinking type, but rather as a man struggling to do what he can to protect innocent lives - in fact, at one point he is shown heroically defending a truck-load of Tutsis from a mob of Interahamwe. In reality, Dallaire was not part of that convoy and the UN soldier who did throw himself between the Tutsis and Interahamwe was a fellow Canadian named Don MacNeil.

My only problem with the Colonel Oliver character is that, given that many of the other characters and situations portrayed were based on actual events, viewers might be led to think that Colonel Oliver is a real person and might never learn of Dallaire's name or his heroism. But Nolte's portrayal does him no disservice.