Blood Diamond
Directed by Edward Zwick
Written by Charles Leavitt
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, and Jennifer Connelly
Thirty years ago, Clint Eastwood walked like a god onscreen in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He and two other men—one a tentative ally, the other a despicable enemy—quested for buried treasure amidst a backdrop of the American Civil War. The film was epic, breathtaking and violent in a revolutionary way. It remains a classic to this day. Blood Diamond is an entirely different movie.
The place and time are different; this film is set during the Sierra Leone Civil War in 1999. This civil war is bigger and more real, but somehow less epic. Instead of icons, the characters in this movie are fully realized and all too human. Instead of the godlike Eastwood and the simpering Eli Wallach—characters with the same goal who are only distinguishable by their attitude and their attractiveness—we have Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou portraying two very real characters with completely different wants.
This is the story of Solomon Vandy, a fisher from a village in Sri Lanka. When his town is attacked by forces from the rebel RUF (Revolutionary United Front), he manages to save his family, but he is captured and forced to work in the captured diamond mines. He finds a huge diamond and buries it, but later reveals the existence of the diamond to smuggler Danny Archer. The plot is complex: Archer wants the diamond, and Solomon wants his family back. Tied into the mix is Maddy Bowen, an idealistic journalist with a growing connection to Archer.
So is Blood Diamond better than Sergio Leone’s classic epic western? Hardly. But, as I said, these are two very different movies. Each has separate merits. For over a decade now, Edward Zwick has been making good movies. Whether Zwick will, like the spaghetti western director, be remembered as a legendary filmmaker is yet to be seen, but Blood Diamond is easily his best film to date.
The mix is something like Sergio Leone’s classic in that neither of the main characters trust each other, but they are forced into a journey toward a treasure. Here, though, the stakes are higher. Getting the diamond has meaning—it could save both men from the hardships of Africa. And the diamond has meaning. The film is one long commentary on the diamond industry, and how it has ravaged Africa. While the film comments heavily on other issues that plague the continent such as AIDS and child soldiery, the diamond industry is targeted most heavily for the film’s scrutiny.
What makes Blood Diamond great is that, while it takes the time to examine and comment upon these social issues, it doesn’t do so at expense of the story. In fact, the social morals are inferred by the story, which is really about the characters. There are a few moments of blatant emotional manipulation, but overall, the film avoids most Hollywood clichés. It is rare to see such a large-scale movie where the characters, not the action or the social messages, drive the movie. But here we have DiCaprio as Danny Archer, an antihero for the modern age, and Hounsou as Solomon Vandy, a powerful man whose life was turned upside down by the world around him.
Both actors are utterly convincing with their performances. DiCaprio affects a South African accent the whole movie and still manages to convey drama. His character is decidedly self-centered, but DiCaprio affects just the right degree of pathos to keep us from hating his character. We feel no sympathy for Danny Archer, Hounsou proves himself to be one of the most capable, visceral actors working today. Even Jennifer Connelly, whose character earns nowhere near as much drama as the two leads’, fleshes out her character and makes her human.
One of the problems Zwick had in his previous films was that his stars stood out from their characters. It was hard not to see Matthew Broderick as himself in Glory or Tom Cruise as anything but Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, despite the fact that both grew facial hair to disguise themselves for their roles. Here, DiCaprio grows some scruff as well, but he is also able to hide behind his character’s demeanor and accent enough that we forget about the actor and start to care about the character. Hounsou is still enough of an unknown that he didn’t need to grow a beard, but the sheer physicality of his performance is amazing.
As complex as it is, Blood Diamond is a deceptively human film. Edward Zwick has managed to direct a massively complex film, certainly larger than Sergio Leone’s epic. But while Blood Diamond may win some awards in the next few months, it lacks the timelessness of that western, and occasionally panders for emotion where emotion is needed. Instead of a small epic about godlike figures, we have a large-scale drama about humans caught up in a war created by humans. The former has stood the test of time, and the latter probably will not, but both are great movies worth watching. While Blood Diamond’s closing message may be over simplified for the situation it presents, it is still essentially valid.