"Blood Diamond" Review
So, last week, I finally saw “Blood Diamond.”After hearing and thinking about this movie for so many months, it was a little strange to judge it not as “An Incredibly Important Issue The Industry Has to Handle,” but as… a movie.
And so my short review is – and the studio can quote me on this: “’Blood Diamond’ Lasts Forever!”
Man, that was boring. Keep in mind, I’m a tough critic, not in the film’s target audience (action-adventure and/or Leonardo DiCaprio fans) and am very close to the subject matter. Furthermore, none of my problems with the film dilute the importance of its message, which I will get to in a second. And I should add that most people I’ve talked to liked it.
But to me, only parts of the film worked. It opens with some incredibly powerful scenes of Sierra Leone’s civil war that viscerally show what life what have been like back then. Many people were turned off by the film's violence, but I admire the filmmakers' determination to show things how they were (and the reality was far worse.) The snapshots of DiCaprio's life as a smuggler were all fascinating. The first 20 minutes or so had me captivated.
But then it devolves into a buddy movie and far-fetched romance. By the time the film reaches its climax on a mountaintop, it has long since plunged into the valley.
The film calls to mind director Ed Zwick’s last film, “The Last Samurai,” which also took a real, very serious historical event and built a cliched movie around it. Yes, Dicaprio is great, the scenery is beautiful, and the child solider scenes are every bit as horrifying as they should be. But it drags on so slowly that I can’t imagine anyone recommending it, or wanting to see such a disturbing movie in the middle of the holidays. And, in fact, it did not do well on its opening weekend.
As for its impact on the industry, the film’s final montage – where protesters finally catch up to the evil “Van der Kamp” cartel – and the Kimberley Process-noting end card deliver a surprisingly upbeat message that takes some of the sting away. The film also places Sierra Leone’s civil war, as the trade likes to say, in its “proper historical context.”
However, let’s not fool ourselves: This film and surrounding publicity will hurt diamond sales. No one will come out of that movie lusting for a tennis bracelet. From start to finish, it portrays the industry as amoral and sleazy, and people don’t like to buy from sleazy industries. De Beers also has a major PR problem it may take years to fix. The most hopeful thing I can say is, if a movie audience can buy smuggler Danny Archer’s rehabilitation in the film, perhaps they will eventually accept the diamond industry’s.
In the end, everyone in the trade should see the movie – because its best moments demonstrate, far better than all the talk on this issue ever could, just why there is a Kimberley Process, and how important it is for all people in the chain is to fulfill its obligations.
Misc. notes and quibbles:
-In contrast to what the movie says, if memory serves, Partnership Africa Canada wrote the first report on conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone, but since Global Witness is allied with the filmmakers, they got the shout-out.
- I've been to many conflict diamond conferences in my life, and I never saw the 15 percent number bandied about like it was in the film. If the number did hit 15 percent, it was in the mid-1990s. By 1999, it was clearly around four percent.
-Maybe this is my Jewish paranoia kicking in, but why did Zwick, who is one of us, need to put a yarmulke on the guy in Antwerp?
-The film really demonstrates how much the trade has changed in six years. De Beers no longer stockpiles, and now controls 40 to 50 percent of the market, instead of the 70 - 80 percent it did back then. I am also pretty happy the industry no longer touts the “two month salary guideline” (referenced as “three” in the film), which in retrospect was transparently phony.
-With all the facts the film throws at us, I did not catch one mention of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, now on trial for war crimes, who bares so much of the blame for what happened to Sierra Leone.
- Your reviews are welcome.
Peggy Jo Donahue commented:
I liked what Toni said and I agree with her that the movie was
great and really powerful. Sometimes I think that we, as an
industry, get our knickers in a twist arguing about all that's been
said unfairly - me included - but our anger can obscure the fact
that people have suffered greatly in Africa and sometimes diamonds
have fueled this. I believe we have an obligation to do what we can
to help ensure that diamonds aren't a cause of such suffering
anymore.
Toni Rumore commented:
It seems I'm on my own here, but I thought the film was great (and
not at all boring). It doesn't just confront you, but smacks you,
with social consciousness. The power, to me, is that behind the
fictional threads lies the reality of brutality that happened not
so long ago.
Hedda Schupak commented:
One of the things I thought most important, poignant, and telling
in the film was not one of the more played-up scenes. It was when
Leo DiCaprio, as Danny Archer, explained to Maddy Bowen the
politics of Africa. "This is Africa," he said, explaining that the
various governments only want to profit from natural resources so
as to be able to live in exile somewhere else, and the rebel groups
don't actually want to have to govern the mess that's left. To
truly understand what he's talking about, one would have to be a
scholar of African politics, but that is one of the most telling
moments of the film. Right after seeing it, I happened to read an
article in this month's O (Oprah) magazine, chronicling the women
of the Democratic Republic of Congo two years after an earlier
investigation of abuses against women there. It's not much
different than Sierra Leone--or Darfour, or indeed much of Africa.
Both South Africa and Botwsana are living proof that it doesn't
have to be that way in Africa, but much of the continent has so far
to go. It's not about the diamonds. It's about the future of a land
with very few educated leaders.
Laura Finkelstein commented:
Like Rob, I agree that the movie basically sucked. Unlike Rob, I
don't have as much in-depth diamond knowledge to back up my review.
It was too long, too violent, too nicely wrapped up at the
end...big and dramatic and with brief moments of conflict diamond
illumination but basically, for lack of a better word, annoying.
