Blood Diamond

01.30.07 (11:47 am)   [edit]
Last week, after an awkward meeting with a girl I used to go out with and a friend bailing on me, I found myself hanging around San Francisco on a Tuesday night with nothing to do. So I went to a movie. It was about 10:30, so there were only a couple of movies showing. I remembered vaguely hearing someone say Blood Diamond was good, and since there was no fucking way I was seeing the crappy Hitcher remake, a horrible romantic comedy, or The Pursuit of Happyness (again), Blood Diamond seemed like the right choice.

It was a pretty good move.

I know a lot of my reviews here end up being pretty negative, but that's Hollywood's fault for making mediocre films, not mine for noticing it. Now, I used to totally hate Leonardo DiCaprio. This dates back to What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, one of my least favorite movies ever. From then on, Hollywood's blond wonder boy starred in a series of movies I totally hated, including everyone's favorite 85 hour long odyssey of pain, Titanic. But believe it or not, Leo finally won me over. I really enjoyed Catch Me If You Can, and it really was enough to erase years of animosity. I'm glad, because I think I would have missed out of I avoided Blood Diamond on his account. It even has good pacing, so I didn't have a problem with its two and a half hour running length.

Blood Diamond is the kinda slightly sorta true story of the African nation of Sierra Leone, torn apart by civil war and diamond smuggling. Djimon Hounsou is adequate as Solomon Vandy, a fisherman captured by the rebel army trying to overthrow the corrupt government of Sierra Leone. Their brutal assault tears apart his poor village, they kidnap his family, and force him into slavery mining diamonds for them. A convenient attack on the slave camp gives Solomon the excuse to run off with the biggest diamond anyone has found and hide it in the dirt. Of course, the only person to see him do this is the cackling villain who immediately loses his eye in an explosion that manages to not harm Solomon at all. Promptly arrested, he meets DiCaprio's white South African soldier turned smuggler Danny Archer, who gets him out of jail and helps him track down his family, but all he wants is the giant diamond. Jennifer Connelly is not exactly challenged by her role as the American reporter who wants to make a difference, but she is so natural and endearing, I'm willing to let it slide. She's come a long way since Labyrinth. Naturally, she humanizes the bitter and apparently heartless Danny Archer. But the movie at least has the guts not to let them ride off into the sunset together.

Is it is just me, or is "Solomon" a totally annoying name to give a character in a movie about diamonds, considering the legends about the Biblical King Solomon's diamond mines? That's kind of a lame allusion, and immediately makes me think of the Victorian novel King Solomon's Mines, where Allan Quartermain and his crew of snooty English big game hunters/aristocrats have an adventure locating Solomon's mines. While it's not as overtly "Hey look at all these savages in Africa, let's bring them culture and religion/kill them/conquer them" as say, Heart of Darkness, there's still a very 1800's colonial attitude in the book.

The interesting thing about Blood Diamond is that it's almost a throwback to old Hollywood films following the tradition of these books where the shining white hunter with an innate affinity for Africa goes on a rollicking quest, with his faithful black manservant at his side and of course his sexy (white) love interest, all while fighting the uncultured savages and wild animals. The cool thing about Blood Diamond is that while it digs up this tired old formula, it also subverts it.

Blood Diamond goes out of its way to point out how these old movies are totally ridiculous, but at the same time, it embraces their clichés so thoroughly I kept going back and forth on whether it was actually subverting them or just pointing them out. Danny Archer is not the sterling white hero who leaves his family's massive library of rare books and leather chairs in England to go find some mythical jewel. Hell, he's not even a college professor with a penchant for adventure and rare historical artifacts like Indiana Jones. No, he is a soldier for apartheid era South Africa turned totally amoral diamond smuggler. While he does have his expected Hollywood style depth (his parents were both horribly murdered when he was a child), he's still not that deep of a character, but DiCaprio's performance makes the character a lot more compelling than he could have been in the hands of one of Hollywood's dopey action heroes.

Much of the film's point is that "conflict diamonds", or diamonds from war zones, are bought up by westerners at the expense of poor, exploited Africans and the profits are used to finance rebel armies. Heartless people are making big bucks off of horrors. I find it interesting, then, that the filmmakers chose to modernize Hollywood's old exploitative style of Africa movies.

They do more than just update white hunter in Africa movie in content, but in style as well. Many of the action movie tics that have become commonplace today are in evidence, including my least favorite, what I like to call the Drunken Cameraman. Look guys, I know you watched French new wave films. I know you think handheld cameras that are bouncing around makes you think your film is more authentic, like Vietnam news footage or something. You are wrong. It just makes it hard as hell to see what is happening. Can I please have an action scene where the camera is still enough to see what is happening? I'd appreciate it.

In the film's defense, duels and skirmishes where the main characters are actually fighting are all pretty clear. It's usually only when war suddenly breaks out and our heroes are just trying to get out of the way that the camera is bouncing around like a kid hopped up on too much candy, but it's still annoying.

That said, I still I had good time with the movie and it has a clean, lush visual style and takes good advantage of location shooting and I am glad to see Leonardo DiCaprio move away from his willowy pretty boy persona. There's also a really interesting scene where Solomon is not cooperating and Danny calls him a slave and they have a fight, and another one where Solomon sees his son, brainwashed and drugged into becoming a rebel soldier and calls out to him, giving away their position and almost getting Solomon and Danny killed. To hammer home the point that this is not okay, Danny brutally chops up a jungle animal and tells Solomon he'll do that to him if he ever endangers his life that way again.

Sure, at the end, Danny redeems himself completely, but you saw that coming, right? I'm still kind of conflicted about how I feel. On the one hand, those old African quest movies are fun in a belittling, over the top, racist way, and this movie sort of is. But it also ends with western diamond companies getting reamed by the UN for profiting from "conflict diamonds" (a nice, politically correct term) and brings up serious questions about our own complicity in African misery. Do you want someone to buy you a huge rock when you get married, or do you want to buy someone a huge rock? What if it's exploiting poor, miserable Africans? What if diamond companies buy up all the diamonds and only release a few to the market so they can jack up the price and take advantage of us as well?

I can see why diamond companies would hate this movie. I also have to question the Nas song at the end of the movie about diamonds. I mean, shouldn't Mr. Bling be the last one complaining about people buying horrible "conflict diamonds"? I mean, seriously. Isn't that a bit hypocritical? And if he really had a sudden change of heart, wouldn't it be better if it wasn't attached to a million dollar Hollywood movie? Come on.

I have to say I liked Blood Diamond, but it's definitely a bit flawed, and kind of awkward morally, but that's a lot of what makes it interesting. Good and interesting, but not fabulous.

I should see more movies.

01.23.07 (4:07 pm)   [edit]
I know I haven't written much lately, but I haven't really seen any movies lately. The holidays basically kept me from doing anything for weeks, and since then I've been trying to record an album and reestablish my social life. All I've seen lately is a bad compilation movie made by chopping together four episodes of direct-to-video anime. Should I just stick to "real" movies, or do you guys want me to write about stuff like this?

The Pursuit of Happyness

01.02.07 (12:12 pm)   [edit]
EDIT: Okay, I finally finished this.

My first thought when I saw the trailer for this movie was that they spelled the word "happiness" wrong so it would be easier to trademark the title. And that kind of crass thinking is pretty much how I viewed the entire movie when I later saw it with a group from work. The Pursuit of Happyness is a schmaltzy little chunk of Hollywood nepotism, just in time for the holidays! I'm trying not to be too sarcastic, but let's just look at this movie for what it is: Will Smith and his actual son, trying to gain sympathy by looking cute and pretending to be poor.

Don't you feel bad for the poor multimillionaire? He has to sleep in a bathroom at BART!

The film is intended to be cheesy feel good "aww, let's prove that we still have faith in humanity!" holiday fare, along the lines of It's A Wonderful Life, but with perhaps a little less overt of a Christmas theme. After all, Christmas is no longer politically correct.

The Pursuit of Happyness is not a complete train wreck. Most of the acting is competent, and I don't have any real complaints with the cinematography. It's nothing that will stand out in any way, but it gets the job done professionally.

Another plus the movie has going for it is that it is set in San Francisco, my favorite city, and obviously I recognized many of the sights. It's also set in the 80's, and since I was a child in the 80's, there's also that element of nostalgia.

But like many movies Hollywood is churning out these days, The Pursuit of Happyness has severe pacing problems. This is not a matter of going on way too long (like your Lords of the Rings or your King Kongs), this is matter of really flawed screenplay structure more than anything. Some movies can get away with not following typical dramatic three act structure, but it takes someone both skilled and artistic to pull it off. This movie is just not that experimental or daring, and so it looks like a miscarriage of a film.

Here's why: In a normal down-on-your-luck story, we meet the characters and learn that the protagonist has a horrible life, then the protagonist struggles to improve his life, and then things improve after a big conflict, and finally we get to ride along with the protagonist for a bit while he enjoys the fruits of his labors, and isn't life great after all and we all leave the theatre feeling happy.

Not in this movie.

In this movie it's 98% "life is shit, and boy aren't white people oblivious to that fact that not everyone is rich like them", followed by a 2 minute epilogue with a smarmy voice over telling us that things are great now. This pay off is unacceptable.

That also brings up another problem I have with this movie. The voice over is totally insulting and superfluous. I think it's supposed to make us like Will Smith's character and find him easier to relate to, but it's just really lazy, lazy storytelling. Sometimes this kind of narration works, largely as a matter of mood in film noir or introspective art films. The Pursuit of Happyness does not have a good reason for this narration at all. It's just intrusive and makes the movie seem slower than it is. Also, Will Smith's toothless, unfunny jokes in the voice over really get on my nerves. But maybe I am just not the target of this movie, seeing as I have no children, and have never been homeless.

Another big problem is that aside from Will Smith's character, everyone else is the movie is just a boring stock character. The dopey old rich white guys who don't realize how poor and in trouble Will Smith is could be at least moderately interesting background characters, instead of the boring shells they are. Just look at the Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykroyd comedy from 1983, Trading Places. Sure, they were amoral old rich white guys, but they were aware that their capricious whims were mangling regular people's lives. They just thought it was funny. This shows character. It shows how little other people matter to them. The ones in The Pursuit of Happyness are just oblivious. In fact, while I'm at, just watch Trading Places instead of Pursuit of Happyness period. It's a much funnier movie, a much more intelligent movie, and has better pacing and explores similar themes with far more class, style, and thought.

Now for some minor irritants: Okay, you left a super expensive bone density scanning machine with a homeless chick with a guitar because you are a naive moron. So we have a chase scene where you get your stupid scanner back. I'll let you get away with that once. But you do the SAME STUPID THING AGAIN AND FORCE US TO WATCH ANOTHER PATHETIC CHASE SCENE LATER IN THE MOVIE? NO. BAD MOVIE.

Furthermore, how is it that Will Smith is just as homeless as the bums, yet his clothes are always clean and immaculately pressed (despite the amount of running and sweating he does on camera), how is he always clean shaven and showered, and how does he keep that afro in check? He can't loan his boss five bucks for a cab, but he can get his hair done? I realize this is a standard problem with Hollywood movies (see the zillion film women who wake up in the morning with perfect hair and make-up), but it sticks out badly in contrast to the many downtrodden homeless people the film shoves in our faces. Oh, I feel so bad for you, fit, attractive, and charming man.

Come to think of it, he is charming and attractive (despite the mustache), so if he had no place for him and his little son to stay, are you trying to tell me he couldn't say some sweet nothings to any of a number of girls and talk his way into their bedrooms? Please.

On the bright side, at least Will Smith has toned down his, "I make this look good" too cool for school (but not primetime sitcoms) persona and made an attempt at serious acting, but guys, really, I am just not buying this.

As I'm writing this, The Pursuit of Happyness is still number 5 at the box office. I was about to make a comment about how there is no accounting for taste, but the number 4 movie is a dire remake of a film where Rutger Hauer was a hitchhiker who murdered people.