Two weeks ago, the Toronto Star visited the set of Shake Hands with the Devil, the new film set during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and starring Roy Dupuis as Canadian general Roméo Dallaire. Today, the Globe and Mail also takes a look at the film:
Shake Hands With the Devil distills Dallaire’s memoir of the same name into a journey that sees a career soldier from Montreal be entrusted with Rwanda’s future. By the movie’s climax, Dallaire is laying bare his human frailty and guilt over the lives of Rwandans and UN peacekeepers he could not, or did not, save.
“I’m telling the general’s story, but also the story of the UN, of French treachery, of [then U.S. president] Bill Clinton’s negligence and I’m telling it all through Dallaire,” Spottiswoode says during a lunch break.
Dupuis, having prepared for his latest role with instruction from Dallaire, says he’s playing the retired general more like a priest at the start of a spiritual odyssey.
“He [Dallaire] is not this dark, secret figure you expect of a military leader. He’s open and direct. And he’s never afraid,” Dupuis says of his onscreen character between takes.
Flush with Telefilm Canada financing for a $10-million feature to be released theatrically in 2007, Shake Hands With the Devil co-producer Laszlo Barna bills the homegrown movie as the country’s Lawrence of Arabia.
“It’s Canada’s epic story, and it’s all modern-day,” Barna insists before returning to oversee a gruelling 30-day, dawn-to-dusk production schedule stretching into mid-August.
But while the Canadian film is ambitious, its portrayal of the inhumane 1994 bloodbath is hardly told from the perspective of Rwandans. . . .
The story goes on to cite local Rwandans who are critical of the United Nations and even of Dallaire himself. Check it out.
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