Beyond The Gates

As part of holiday time off, the Chittum family in Georgia -- Michael, Vicki, and Joshua (who is on temporary relocation assignment from Bethel College in Newton, Kansas) -- decided to rent some movies to fill the idle days. This has proven to be an outstanding decision. We rented three -- none of which I had heard of before -- and watched two so far.

The first one was an odd sci fi type of movie, The Fountain, starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. It is set in three different time eras - during the Conquistadors, present day, and in the 26th century, and the action switches from one to another. Jackman's character is on a quest to defeat death. Darren Aronofsky, who did Pi and Requiem for a Dream, was the director. If you have nothing else to do on a Saturday night, it might be worth a watch.

The second movie we watched, Beyond The Gates, however, is worth finding and watching. It is a BBC production based on an incident during the Rwandan massacre in 1994. It stars John Hurt as a Catholic priest who runs a school in Kilgali. His school becomes a refuge for Tutsi who are fleeing the death mobs. The school is a safe place because a contigent of UN peace monitors were stationed there. I do not not want to spoil the dramatic impact of the film, but the squad of Belgian soldiers are given orders to abandon the school and go to the airport. The mob of Hutus waiting beyond the gates of the school move in to "begin the work."

This movie is a must see. It is far better done than Hotel Rwanda and wrestles with the issues of the evil that men do and the choices that men make. The movie opens by quoting a Buddhist proverb, "Each man is given the key to open the gates of heaven. The same key also opens the gates of hell."