I watched Blood Diamond last night, and find it hard to sum up what an effect this movie had on me. I’ve ranted about my views on Africa and the way this beautiful place is just so ravaged and messed up, and I knew about Sierra Leone and what went down there during the Civil War. None of that prepared me for the ‘reality’ of the situation though. Yes, it was just a movie… but it was a movie based on very real events, and a very real war and very real practices that are still going on in Africa, even if it ended in Sierra Leone.
The movie tells the tale of Solomon (Djimon Hounsou), a fisherman who is abducted when rebels raid his village. He is sent to work in the illegal rebel-controlled diamond mines, where he one day finds a huge pink diamond. Hiding it, he eventually manages to bury it, despite the war lord’s attempt to get it from him. When the mining operation is attacked my the military, Solomon is thrown in jail. This is where Danny Archer (played by Leo DiCaprio with a dodgy Saffer accent) happens to hear about the stone. He decides to help Solomon get the stone from its hiding place, but he has his own agenda. When an American journalist (gorgeous Jennifer Connelly) crosses their path and agrees to help them, they are confronted with all the horrors of conflict-torn Sierra Leone, complete with child soldiers on the rampage, one of whom is Solomon’s son Dia.
Bling Bang
The scenes are horrendous and heartbreaking, and Djimon Hounsou is spellbinding in his role of tormented Solomon. It made Hotel Rwanda look like a Disney movie, and some bits made me cover my eyes or just sit in horror with tears running down my face. What made it all so much harder to watch was the fact that all of this happened, not so much the pink stone itself, but the diamond fields and the amputations by rebels, the child army, the killing… TIA as Leo’s character tells the journalist. This is Africa.
Still, it left a bad taste in the mouth and a lump in the throat, long after I turned off the television. One of the few pleasurable parts was seeing my cousin’s name in the credits, super chuffed about that!
If you haven’t seen it, make a plan. It’s not a feel good movie really, but it is a good movie and a thinking movie with relevance. We don’t get many of those that aren’t mawkish and OTT, and this one has a strong local cast too which makes it even more worth a watch.
Bling bang indeed… makes one feel a little wary of shiny stones.
