Blood Diamonds

I finally saw “Blood Diamonds” last week. The movie was difficult to watch for a number of reasons and I had to stop about half way through, do something else until the nausea passed before I could finish it.

The story is fairly predictable: tough, worldly wise, white man searches for jewels and riches in jungle, meets white woman, and finally redeems himself.

The lead character in the movie Danny Archer is an Afrikaner, or “Rhodesian” as he euphemistically prefers to call himself, who smuggles weapons into Sierra Leone, trades them to the RUF guerrillas for uncut diamonds and smuggles the diamonds out. He had also served in Angola as part of the South African military presumably during the 80’s when the South African Defense Forces entered Angola to fight with UNITA and were accused of repeatedly of atrocities against civilians. For example in a 1978 attack South African troops killed more than six hundred Namibians at a SWAPO camp in Angola. South Africa's Truth Commission called it "one of the biggest single incidents of gross [human rights] violations." For many veterans of the South African military, however, it is still celebrated as the largest paratroop drop since World War II and "a complete success," with "at least 608 SWAPO fighters killed" and only four dead among the attackers. More recently mass graves have been found near SADF camps.

Nice guy.

To make this despicable man palatable, the director casts one of Hollywood’s heart throbs Leonardo DiCaprio in this role. The baby faced Archer shows up in a plane – tough talks to a bunch of RUF militia and commander – who you cant help thinking would have this guy for breakfast in real life if he didn’t have the white establishment behind him.

He’s caught trying to cross the border on foot with the diamonds sown into a goat’s back. One is left wondering why they didn’t fly over the border using the same plane they came in. In the meantime, the devastiatingly handsome model, Djimon Hounsou, who plays Solomon Vandy has also been captured, first by the RUF to work in the diamond fields then by the Army and they both arrive at the same prison. Archer interest in Solomon is piqued when overhears a RUF commander accuse Solomon of hiding a large “pink diamond.”

The contrast between these two characters is striking – Archer is calculating, able to make decision and take actions to protect himself and his interests both financial and personal. Solomon on the other hand seems incapable of any thought or action to save himself or his family. Even though he finds the diamond and tries to hide it, he’s found out and only saved by fate as the army attacks the rebels at that exact moment. As the movie unfolds he falls from one disaster into the next unable to save himself and seems on the verge of despair until he finally accepts Danny’s offer of help in exchange for showing him where he hid the diamond.

Probably the only sympathetic black character with some semblance of intelligence is the savvy black bartender M’ed (Ntare Mwine). He’s obviously the kind of person westerners relate to when they are in Africa – people in the service industry who “befriend” then and who get them things not otherwise easily accessible, drugs, women, and guns in the case of Danny. According to the script: “Every war zone has a place like this. Soldiers, smugglers, opportunist of every stripe stand shoulder to shoulder at a bamboo bar. Bad guys and do-gooders, UN workers and eco-backpackers drink overpriced, watered down liquor, trade gossip and hook up for desperate expatriate sex.”

At one point when the bar is damaged by some shelling Danny tells M’ed that it “Might be time to get your family out my friend.” M’ed : “And go where, mahn? Jus’ fire up de chopper and fly away like you people? No, mahn, dis my country. We here long ‘fore you came and long after you gone.” You know then that M’ed has just become another of Hollywood expendable black man. Later we see him dead in the background.

At the bar we are introduced to Maddy(Jennifer Connelly) – an American journalist. Perhaps unwittingly, Zwick shows us an uncomfortable reality - the way most American journalists work nowadays – from their hotels in an alcoholic haze talking with other expatriates. Maddy has only been there four months but seems to know all of Archer’s professional history as well as his connections to the underground diamond trade – names, places everything. Even as she sanctimoniously lectures him, you know she will be falling for the white lead in the movie. Within minutes of meeting him she peppers him with questions and asks for his help with a hint of sex to trade for it. Embedded American journalists! Later she offers to help Solomon find his family – but only because Archer promises her a scoop – waving his notebook that presumably documents names, dates and places.

At one point in the movie Archer is telling her how his parents were brutally murdered and she melts into his arms all of his repugnant past actions are justified and forgiven.

As with Archer and Solomon, the contrast between the two main military commanders, one black and the other white, couldn’t be more cartoonish. On the one side is the hilariously named RUF commander Captain Poison, and the South African Mercenary Colonel Theo Coetsee. One is 60, suave, handsome, cultured and drinks martinis, the other is vicious, young, ugly with a deformed eye, covered by a pirate eye patch and smokes joints. In reality Coetsee would have mutilated and killed many more people than Poison ever could yet he painted with a sympathetic brush while Poison in spite of his emancipating rhetoric is shown as pure evil. Towards the end of the movie, Coetsee gives orders to snuff out the population in a whole area while the RUF lives among them. The South African lives comfortably on a farm, surrounded by wealth and status, putting him in the same class as the other whites portrayed in the movie and one can imagine him easily mixing with the hypocritical western diplomats seen in the movie. Poison on the other hand is a man who scrapes out an uncomfortable existence never sure if he will live to see another day. Coetsee is coldly efficient and professional while Poison is volatile, disorganized and impulsive. Yet the real exploiters of Africa are portrayed sympathetically while those who, however misguided, fight for their land’s self determination are vilified.

There are instances of racism depicted casually throughout the movie, it would seem to provide the same dirty pleasure provided by documentaries on “sex trade” and “prostitutes in Thailand, Philippines or Russia” type documentaries on TV or the sexploitation movies that exploit and moralize simultaneously. Archer brushing off girl prostitutes callously, African getting out of a white man’s path, Archer telling Solomon, “I know people, white people. Without me, you’re just another black man in Africa, all right?” Perhaps the worst incident occurs during march through the countryside as the dynamic between Archer and Solomon changes imperceptibly to that of master and slave. When Archer commands Solomon to head in a particular direction (toward the diamond) rather than the camp where Dia might be staying, the father refuses to follow orders. “You gonna need some of that old discipline, eh?” taunts Archer. Again, Solomon denies him, “You are not the master.” But then Archer reveals what’s at stake, not just power and wealth, but racism, calling Solomon “kaffir.” But Zwick shows its true colors when he has Solomon say “I know good people who say there is something wrong with us, besides our black skin, that we were better off when the white men ruled.”

As Rebecca Beirne states: It is this statement that echoes across the film, acting as a justification of and incitement to colonialism, disavowing the role colonialism has played in creating Africa's problems, and proclaiming that Africans are childlike or savage beings that need white masters to rule over them in order to stop them from killing one another: a chilling message from a contemporary Hollywood feature film, and a reflection of how much western societies' attitudes have cycled back to the colonialist mentalities of time past.


Here is another review