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CS Weekly Archive> DVD > 09/28/07
A Horrible, Beautiful Film
by peter clines
Beyond the Gates
Screenplay by David Wolstencroft
Story by Richard Alwyn and David Belton
 
 
Joe (Hugh Dancy) is an idealistic, young teacher at a Rwandan Catholic school run by Father Christopher (John Hurt) and guarded by a platoon of UN soldiers. But when the president is killed and Hutu militias begin slaughtering their Tutsi countrymen, both men must make decisions of who will be allowed into the safety of their compound, how far they’ll go to protect them…and how long they will stay before evacuating. Beyond the Gates is one of those equally beautiful and awful films that simultaneously shows mankind at its very worst and very best. The screenplay by David Wolstencroft (MI-5) bypasses the easy terrors of the massacre and instead focuses on the intimate, creeping horror of the situation, as the European missionaries, journalists, and soldiers trapped within the school all must come to terms with what is happening around them and the moral and ethical decisions they struggle with as each day passes. The commentary with Wolstencroft and David Belton (himself a veteran journalist of the genocide) addresses both the carefully paced dramatic impact of key scenes and the actual events as they unfolded. It sounds wrong to label anything about that nightmarish time as fantastic, but there really is no other word for Beyond the Gates.
Beyond the Gates
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
Rated R; 112 min.
$27.98
Buy it now
Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.
Beyond the Gates courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
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