Blood Diamond
Edward Zwick specializes in a kind of epic film-making that wears white liberal guilt on its sleeve. First was Glory, then there was The Last Samurai, and now there’s Blood Diamond (there have been a few other films along the way, most notably The Legends of the Fall). Each of these films is an old-fashioned action picture with an earnest examination of how white Europeans have made life so miserable for everyone else.
Of course, he’s right, and the success of these pictures is how well he manages to bury the message in the context of a good film. Glory was a fantastic movie, and extremely moving in its depiction of black soldiers in the Civil War led by a white commander. The Last Samurai, with a white man learning the ways of the Japanese, was far less successful. Blood Diamond is somewhere in the middle. It’s a fine action picture with some stunning locales, but its earnestness and implication that the diamond ring on your finger may have come at the expense of the lives of those who dug it up weight it down into the realm of the polemic.
The dual protagonists are Solomon Vandy, (Djimon Hounsou) a fisherman in the war-torn country of Sierra Leone. He has a family and hopes that his son will one day become a doctor. One day his world is turned upside down when a roaming band of machine-gun toting rebels kidnaps him and puts him to work digging for diamonds in a river. He finds a large, pink stone, and manages to hide it before government troops break up the rebel diamond operation.
Leonardo DiCaprio is Danny Archer, a smooth-talking smuggler of Rhodesian birth. He happens to hear about Solomon’s find, and strikes a deal—he will reunited Solomon with his family if he is led to the pink diamond. Archer realizes the return on that stone is enough to get him out of Africa for good.
Along the way a muckraking reporter, played by Jennifer Connelly, helps the two men. They get in and out of some tight scrapes, and eventually Solomon’s son is captured by rebels and brainwashed into their belief system. There are many scenes of indiscriminate mayhem, interspersed with commentary about how the soulless diamond merchants are exploiting the citizenry to satisfy the craving for bling in the United States.
The problem is the two strands, action and politics, never quite mesh together. DiCaprio’s character is terrific, in the Rick Blaine tradition of the hardened cynic who finally opens his heart for his fellow man. But the other two main characters don’t work. Hounsou’s fisherman is a bit too reminiscent of the noble savage. He is a good and decent man who can be driven to rage when his family is threatened, so Hounsou basically has two modes of expression—composed dignity, and manic rage. Connelly is in a tough position. She is a transcendentally beautiful woman, which means a woman who looks like her tramping about in the bush immediately draws attention, which I can live with, because beautiful women do all sorts of things, but she never seems to me to be a real journalist. It’s more like she’s playing an actress who is researching the role of a journalist. The only time she is ever seen taking a note is when she’s pretending to interview a soldier to provide a diversion.
The role of Archer, along with his work in this year's The Departed, marks of a coming of age for DiCaprio. He is forceful and mesmerizing here, with a scruff of beard and a world-weary cynicism. His scenes at the end of the picture, which reminded me of For Whom the Bell Tolls, will be my lasting memory of this film. In The Aviator I got too much of a sense of a young actor playing dress-up, but there’s none of that in Blood Diamond. DiCaprio was a Rhodesian mercenary/smuggler.
The underlying theme, though, that many diamonds in circulation today have blood in their history, is an important one and rings loud and clear. Ideally, this would have been a better documentary about the exploitation of Africans in the mining of diamonds, but of course that would have been seen by far less people. In the end, though, a film can’t be judged by its intentions, however righteous they may be.
Of course, he’s right, and the success of these pictures is how well he manages to bury the message in the context of a good film. Glory was a fantastic movie, and extremely moving in its depiction of black soldiers in the Civil War led by a white commander. The Last Samurai, with a white man learning the ways of the Japanese, was far less successful. Blood Diamond is somewhere in the middle. It’s a fine action picture with some stunning locales, but its earnestness and implication that the diamond ring on your finger may have come at the expense of the lives of those who dug it up weight it down into the realm of the polemic.
The dual protagonists are Solomon Vandy, (Djimon Hounsou) a fisherman in the war-torn country of Sierra Leone. He has a family and hopes that his son will one day become a doctor. One day his world is turned upside down when a roaming band of machine-gun toting rebels kidnaps him and puts him to work digging for diamonds in a river. He finds a large, pink stone, and manages to hide it before government troops break up the rebel diamond operation.
Leonardo DiCaprio is Danny Archer, a smooth-talking smuggler of Rhodesian birth. He happens to hear about Solomon’s find, and strikes a deal—he will reunited Solomon with his family if he is led to the pink diamond. Archer realizes the return on that stone is enough to get him out of Africa for good.
Along the way a muckraking reporter, played by Jennifer Connelly, helps the two men. They get in and out of some tight scrapes, and eventually Solomon’s son is captured by rebels and brainwashed into their belief system. There are many scenes of indiscriminate mayhem, interspersed with commentary about how the soulless diamond merchants are exploiting the citizenry to satisfy the craving for bling in the United States.
The problem is the two strands, action and politics, never quite mesh together. DiCaprio’s character is terrific, in the Rick Blaine tradition of the hardened cynic who finally opens his heart for his fellow man. But the other two main characters don’t work. Hounsou’s fisherman is a bit too reminiscent of the noble savage. He is a good and decent man who can be driven to rage when his family is threatened, so Hounsou basically has two modes of expression—composed dignity, and manic rage. Connelly is in a tough position. She is a transcendentally beautiful woman, which means a woman who looks like her tramping about in the bush immediately draws attention, which I can live with, because beautiful women do all sorts of things, but she never seems to me to be a real journalist. It’s more like she’s playing an actress who is researching the role of a journalist. The only time she is ever seen taking a note is when she’s pretending to interview a soldier to provide a diversion.
The role of Archer, along with his work in this year's The Departed, marks of a coming of age for DiCaprio. He is forceful and mesmerizing here, with a scruff of beard and a world-weary cynicism. His scenes at the end of the picture, which reminded me of For Whom the Bell Tolls, will be my lasting memory of this film. In The Aviator I got too much of a sense of a young actor playing dress-up, but there’s none of that in Blood Diamond. DiCaprio was a Rhodesian mercenary/smuggler.
The underlying theme, though, that many diamonds in circulation today have blood in their history, is an important one and rings loud and clear. Ideally, this would have been a better documentary about the exploitation of Africans in the mining of diamonds, but of course that would have been seen by far less people. In the end, though, a film can’t be judged by its intentions, however righteous they may be.
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