Blood Diamond

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.