I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda yesterday. It is an incredibly moving film and I reccommend everyone see it. It is about the massacres in Rwanda that happened 10 years ago when the Hutus and the Tootsies hacked each other to death in reaction to the gaps between rich and poor brought about by colonisation. At the end though, as I wiped my tears, I thought that they really should have played 400 Miles From Darwin by the Whitlams over the credits:
We pay to shed a sombre tear in the darkness together here
One among the hundreds, crying for the millions
And when the house lights break the trance
Only then unclasp our hands
Compose ourselves and fix our hair
"We would have all been Schindler there"
Drive in silence slowly home
Now horror's more than skin and bone
And can you see in twenty years
We'll pay to shed the same cheap tears
In a film about an island, watch our hero take a stand
Pay our money gladly to wash our hands
Watching the movie we'll ask how the people might have known
Let it happen there without a fight
Kept driving on quietly home
Left the Timorese alone - 400 miles from Darwin
The two-minute hate is now the three-hour love
With any action left to up above
Those people then could turn their heads
Now all the same we sleep instead
While 400 miles from Darwin
East Timor is dying
Watching the movie we'll ask how the people might have known
Let it happen there without a fight
Kept driving on quietly home
Left the Timorese alone - 400 miles from Darwin
I believe the sequel, Hotel Sudan, is already in the pipeline. It should be a ripper few hours entertainment, starring Denzel Washington and Halle Berry.