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Film review: Blood Diamond
Jan. 28th, 2007 03:11 pmBack in Bad Wiessee, where there is finally snow, but alas, not for long. Well, that's better for work, I suppose.
I saw Blood Diamond before leaving Munich. It's been called Howard Hawks inspired by our local movie critic, and I can see why - di Caprio has essentially the Bogart role, and Jennifer Connelly is the Rosalind Russell type. (No Hawks precedent for Djimon Hounsou's character, who is actually the heart and moral center of the movie.) I'd have gone with John Huston rather than Hawks with my comparison, though - and there is definitely something old Hollywood, adventure movie about the film, which isn't a bad thing. On the other hand, it's also unrelentingly present day, and unabashedly accusing in its message. "I'm tired of writing sensitive, useless pieces about African victims," says Connelly's journalist at one point, and proceeds to explain that what she wants is a story that actually has the power to change things, and she can get that only by writing about the perpetrators as well as the victims, to show just how the system works. It's pretty much meta about the movie itself. Hence di Caprio as mercenary and diamond smuggler Danny Archer, without whom Solomon Vandy (Hounsou), who wants his family back, would not be able to reach that goal.
Given the white/black constellation, there is a potential and obvious problem here, and the movie wisely doesn't pretend not to see it, on the contrary, it ups the stakes by making Danny Archer not just white but a white African, a Rhodesian, and letting that explode between him and Solomon at one point. All the African issues here get personal rather than theoretical; most harrowing in the sequences that deal with Solomon Vandy's son, who over the course of the movie gets transformed into a child soldier by the R.U.F., Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front. The film goes for the emotional jugular there, and those are the scenes I found most terrible to watch, though I had read articles about the methods to transform children via drugs, booze, guns and brainwashing into joyous killers before. The question soon isn't "can Solomon find his son" but "can Solomon bring his son back from this if he finds him?" And then, once a bit of Archer's past is revealed, you realize that in a way, Archer foreshadows what can become of the boy if Solomon doesn't manage this.
Excellent performances by all three leads. It was a bit odd to see Michael Sheen (aka Tony Blair in "The Deal" and "The Queen") in a minor bad guy role as a higher-up in the Organzation Which The Film Doesn't Call De Beers Which Didn't Stop De Beers From Panicking); the script manages to do a J'accuse without sparing anyone, but its conclusion isn't cynicism but a cautious hope that at least some changes are possible.
I saw Blood Diamond before leaving Munich. It's been called Howard Hawks inspired by our local movie critic, and I can see why - di Caprio has essentially the Bogart role, and Jennifer Connelly is the Rosalind Russell type. (No Hawks precedent for Djimon Hounsou's character, who is actually the heart and moral center of the movie.) I'd have gone with John Huston rather than Hawks with my comparison, though - and there is definitely something old Hollywood, adventure movie about the film, which isn't a bad thing. On the other hand, it's also unrelentingly present day, and unabashedly accusing in its message. "I'm tired of writing sensitive, useless pieces about African victims," says Connelly's journalist at one point, and proceeds to explain that what she wants is a story that actually has the power to change things, and she can get that only by writing about the perpetrators as well as the victims, to show just how the system works. It's pretty much meta about the movie itself. Hence di Caprio as mercenary and diamond smuggler Danny Archer, without whom Solomon Vandy (Hounsou), who wants his family back, would not be able to reach that goal.
Given the white/black constellation, there is a potential and obvious problem here, and the movie wisely doesn't pretend not to see it, on the contrary, it ups the stakes by making Danny Archer not just white but a white African, a Rhodesian, and letting that explode between him and Solomon at one point. All the African issues here get personal rather than theoretical; most harrowing in the sequences that deal with Solomon Vandy's son, who over the course of the movie gets transformed into a child soldier by the R.U.F., Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front. The film goes for the emotional jugular there, and those are the scenes I found most terrible to watch, though I had read articles about the methods to transform children via drugs, booze, guns and brainwashing into joyous killers before. The question soon isn't "can Solomon find his son" but "can Solomon bring his son back from this if he finds him?" And then, once a bit of Archer's past is revealed, you realize that in a way, Archer foreshadows what can become of the boy if Solomon doesn't manage this.
Excellent performances by all three leads. It was a bit odd to see Michael Sheen (aka Tony Blair in "The Deal" and "The Queen") in a minor bad guy role as a higher-up in the Organzation Which The Film Doesn't Call De Beers Which Didn't Stop De Beers From Panicking); the script manages to do a J'accuse without sparing anyone, but its conclusion isn't cynicism but a cautious hope that at least some changes are possible.
