In 1994, I was like most people in North America -- watching network news, I knew far more about what was happening with O.J. Simpson and his murder trial than about the genocide going on in Rwanda. Nor did that situation change until ten years later, when I saw Hotel Rwanda, and thought, "How could I have missed all that?" From what I’ve read, most of the people in the U.S. and Canada missed the fact that nearly a million people had been slaughtered.

Shake Hands with the Devil, directed by Roger Spottiswoode, is a dramatization of Canadian General Roméo Dallaire’s memoir, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, published in 2003. (A documentary directed by Peter Raymont, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, was released in 2004.) Dallaire, the Canadian military commander in charge of the failed U.N. mission in Rwanda, ended up shouldering much of the blame for various incidents that went on there, including the deaths of a group of Belgian soldiers. However, just as with the Rwandan genocide itself -- and although I, like Dallaire, am Canadian and live in Ottawa -- all that I knew of Dallaire before reading his book was what I’d gleaned from the news: After his time in Rwanda, he’d become an alcoholic and even tried to kill himself. To many in Canada, he seemed a broken-down nut job, though few understood exactly why he’d ended up like that. His book, the documentary, and now this dramatization tell that story, and give detailed accounts of what happened in Rwanda and to Dallaire, and why today’s network news is the last place you’ll likely learn what’s really going on, ever since sensationalized stories about celebrities began to take precedence over serious reportage of world events.

In the new film, Dallaire is played by Canadian actor Roy Dupuis, who starred in one of my favorite films of last year, The Rocket, about the life of hockey legend Maurice Richard. Dupuis is stunning in his portrayal of Dallaire, particular in the way he shows Dallaire’s slow decay. He never resorts to attention-getting scenes of over-the-top histrionics. In fact, quite the opposite. As the pressure tears Dallaire apart from the inside out, Dupuis is able to convey that internal rage so well that you can read it in his eyes. Dupuis even bears a resemblance to the General, which helps make his portrayal all the more real.

SHWTD chronicles Dallaire’s time in Rwanda; the film begins just before the genocide actually started -- though long after the tensions between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis had begun to mount -- and ends with Dallaire becoming increasingly unstable and being relieved of his command. Interspersed are flash-forwards to Dallaire’s breakdown on his return to Canada.

SHWTD portrays Dallaire as a well-respected, capable military commander who might have been the right man for the job had the U.N. given him the power to do it. However, Dallaire found himself in an unwinnable situation with his hands tied. From what I could glean from Dallaire’s book and this film, he didn’t see it coming, which leads me to believe his main flaw was a naïveté about the ways of the U.N. For example, before the genocide, Dallaire discovered stockpiles of weapons whose seizure might have prevented or diminished the slaughter. However, after Dallaire reported this and made plans to raid the stockpiles, the U.N. instead ordered him to report his findings to the same people who would ultimately use those weapons on innocents.

As the violence between Hutus and Tutsis came to a head, following the death in a plane crash of Rwanda’s president, Juvénal Habyarimana, Dallaire called for more support. The U.N. and other nations could have sent help -- it was nearby and available -- but instead they began to pull out, leaving Dallaire’s contingent and the Rwandan people even more helpless. As well, there was strong opposition by the U.N., as well as by some of the world’s most powerful countries, to using the word genocide to describe the systematically organized slaughter; doing so would have obligated them to respond aggressively to stop it -- something that no one, it seems, wanted to do. Instead, they called it a civil war, and the killing went on for months.

Shake Hands with the Devil doesn’t back off from much. It fingers the people, organizations, and countries whose actions contributed to the severity of what happened, and leaves the viewer with no question that, had Dallaire’s command been supported instead of undermined, the situation might not have spiraled out of control. It’s also obvious that, had Dallaire simply walked away, as so many others did, he might not have suffered the health consequences he has. But he refused to give in, and his attitude of giving help at all costs nearly cost him his sanity and his own life.

Only in the depiction of some of the violence that occurred does Spottiswoode show some restraint, though what he does show is still graphic and unsettling. From what I know now of what happened in Rwanda, what appears onscreen only hints at the atrocities that actually took place. It’s hard to blame the filmmakers for holding back in that regard.

Shake Hands with the Devil is a fine interpretation of Dallaire’s book, and one of the most compelling films I’ve seen this year. No two-hour film can contain everything to be found in the book’s 584 pages (if you like this film, want to learn more about the Rwandan genocide, and haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it), let alone the history of discord between the Hutus and Tutsis and the other players that led up to what happened in 1994. Still, Shake Hands with the Devil delivers an unflinching look at what happened in Rwanda while much of the West fixated on O.J.’s trial, and turned its back as nearly a million human beings were slaughtered. While they did, one man stayed on, destroying his own life in trying to save the lives of others.

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