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FLICK CLIQUE
FILM: Blood Diamond
Ashwin Raghu
There is apparently a legend in these parts(Blood Diamond is set in Sierra Leone, in a far corner of north-west Africa) that says the mud there is such a deep red because of the blood that gets mixed with it. In countries such as Sierra Leone, the illegal mining and export of diamonds funds the purchase of arms to finance and further conflict. The local diamond mafia sells these diamonds - mostly to neighbouring countries that will then sell them ’legally’ to merchants in Europe.
Also part of this milieu are fortune-hunters such as Danny Archer(Leonardo Dicaprio), a mercenary from Rhodesia(he still calls it that steadfastly, as opposed to the more indigenous ’Zimbabwe’) who will put his own life at immeasurable risk in search of that elusive stone. Dicaprio attempts an affected portrayal - in speech and manner - of a cynical soldier of fortune. Often, he doesn’t pull it off as seamlessly as he should have. He forms a symbiotic partnership with Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou, in a terrific understated effort), a fisherman whose family has been taken by the revolutionary forces, in a search for a 100-carat stone, through a landscape of horrifying, pitiable scenes of senseless violence and human suffering.
The acronym that every white man in Africa resorts to, as a way of shrugging away the inexplicable injustice and suffering that he sees around him, is T.I.A, short for ’This Is Africa’. There is a nonchalance to the way he says it, but one can see that the nonchalance isn’t by choice. It is rooted in a desensitisation process that needs to happen within each person, just for the sake of staying sane.
The viciousness of the circle is apparent, and has everybody sucked into its net. The revolutionary forces still succeed in recruiting from among common folk and brainwashing them to commit atrocities against their own. The local militia will kill or maim anybody that ventures into "their" territory in a shoot-first policy. The mafia controls the illegal mining and exporting of diamonds, and prefers sprays of bullets to do the talking. The European and American diamond merchants will not hesitate to look barbarism the other way (and hence perpetuate it) as long as the price is right. This is the film’s most indelible impact - it shows you how nobody has been allowed to stay innocent.
One only hopes that movies such as these don’t lose their potency to grab us due to a strange case of overexposure. Many movies are being set amidst the troubles of Africa and bring the indifference of the world into focus (The Constant Gardener is a recent example). But it is equally important that a movie such as this stands on its own merit (and for the most part, Blood Diamond does), and not just on the weight that its bigger picture carries with it. The danger is that these bigger pictures can start blurring into each other - after a point, especially from the cosy vantage point of the multiplex, conflict in Sierra Leone can seem just like conflict in Rwanda can seem just like conflict in Ethiopia. The primary, stated objective of Blood Diamond is to increase awareness. For that, not only do we need to recognize that there is blood being shed on the red sands, we need to discern the shades enough to see the differences.
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