 DIAMONDS ARE HOLLYWOOD’S BEST FRIENDS
Film Review
by Harvey Perr
Blood Diamond
now playing nationwide
Edward Zwick possesses social conscience, humanitarian instincts, and formidable
directorial skills, and he has clearly made “Blood Diamond” to demonstrate all of the above, and the
demonstration leaves almost nothing to be desired. He provides us with information about the civil
war in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s that most of us probably knew very little about; about how
diamonds, known as conflict diamonds, were used to support that war and its insurgency, and to trade
for arms; and how the most valuable diamonds were taken off the market by diamond dealers in order
to maintain the value of existing diamonds. In short, some ugly truths about the diamond industry
and the human carnage that was the result of its profit-making ambitions are revealed to us. This is
the historical event that provides the potent background for his film.
Then there is the film itself, which is, strictly speaking, an action adventure,
but one, of course, with a difference. You might say it is an action adventure film that is
disguised as a serious film with a social conscience, but to say that is to deny the effectiveness
of the film’s epic style that is, in sheer momentum, almost always exciting and even stirring to
watch. And, at the center of that boiling adventure, there is that love story, the voltage of which
is turned up by the sheer power of its stars: Leonardo DiCaprio (pumped up to a testosterone level
you’ve never seen in him before) as Danny Archer, the mercenary in need of redemption; and Jennifer
Connelly (smart and ravishingly beautiful) as Maddy Brown, the journalist who will do almost
anything to get a story. You might say that these are fairly formulaic lovers, but there is no
getting around the fact that they are the Scarlett and Rhett, the Rick and Ilsa, the Karen Blixen
and Denys Hatton at the very romantic heart of this film.
There is also the love, homoerotically charged (without which no real cinematic
saga is ever complete) between DiCaprio, the white African mercenary, and Djimon Hounsou, the black
African everyman, i.e. “The Defiant Ones” revisited and updated. And, finally, there is the
story of Fathers and Sons: DiCaprio and the father he never had, and Hounsou, the father in
ferocious search of his son, who has been trained by the rebels to become a child soldier (of which
we are told 400,000 still exist today), and with whom he is destined to have a reunion – at first
threatening and potentially murderous, but finally tearful and triumphant – before the film’s final
moments (oh, am I giving something away?).
Then, too, there is Eduardo Serra’s sumptuous and breathtaking cinematography,
which, despite all that human carnage on display, should spark a vast tourist migration to Sierra
Leone. And there is also that “Z”-like ending, in which we see the film’s real bad guys
receive the punishment they deserve. All things considered, this is one of those “great” films, one
of those instant classics, a film that has everything and just a little more. A film destined
to win a ton of Academy Award nominations and then, at those grand ceremonies, many of its nominees
(or the wives of the nominees) will show up swathed in diamonds, but sure to remind you that those
are not “conflict” diamonds they are wearing.
So, yes, this is a movie full of real and honorable virtues; a movie that, as a
movie, is good – indeed very good – but, as you may have surmised from a certain tone that has crept
into this review, it is a film which I hate from the bottom of my heart, with every bone in my body,
because it makes me feel sad and angry and impotent; because it fills the screen with acts of
barbaric cruelty which I cannot fully comprehend and about which I can do nothing; because it shows
me the incredibly violent things people are capable of doing to each other yet asks me to cry over
the fictional mush at its center; because pictures are more powerful than words; because no matter
how much we are told that these black Africans learned their worst tortures from white Belgians, the
image that lingers in our head is of black men behaving like animals; because it wants us to
empathize with the plight of those black men of simple and innate decency while taking pleasure in
watching thousands of extras being slaughtered; because it exploits everything it wants us to feel
compassion about; because it reduces all of this to eye candy; because it comes to us, not when we
can do something about it, but after the fact; and finally, because the money this film makes will
not go towards helping the victims of this nightmare, but will instead go into the making of more
movies that will awaken us to the evils of the world without changing a damned thing.
|
