"Blood Diamond" by Edward Zwick

when KC suggested watching "Blood Diamond", me the recluse had no idea which movie it was. i was confused between "Blood Diamond" and "Curse of the Golden Flower" and some other chinese movie. it was too late by the time i found out what the movie was about.

i stopped watching movies that will make me sad since about 10 years ago. i know it's stupid and naive of me and i have missed too many good movies because of this over-sentimentality on my part but it is this over-sentimentality that gave me my dreams when i was a kid and so, it was also this over-sentimentality that made me realise dreams often come with a price that cannot ever be fully paid.

i think too much. so when i can't handle it, i avoid it. typing this now, i see what a wuss i am. *sigh* so... "Blood Diamond".

+++++

it's set in Sierra Leone, Africa in the late 1990s, during a time of civil war when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels attempted to overthrow the government. to fund their respective war efforts, both government and RUF resort to smuggling diamonds out of Africa to Liberia where they are then legitimately sold for a filthy amount of money.

these diamonds came to be known as "blood diamonds", "conflict diamonds" or "war diamonds" because they come at a heavy price - the blood of millions.

Danny Archer, excellently played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a White smuggler who works for Colonel Coetzee. his parents were brutally killed when he was nine and he was recruited by Colonel Coetzee during the apartheid days. his character said, regardless of the stories you hear from Western media, the White men and Black men fought side by side. they were one.

Djimon Hounsou plays Solomon Vandy, a fisherman in Sierra Leone who has a loving wife, one young daughter, one baby, and a son Dia who attends school diligently and learns wisely... until the day RUF invades their village, razes it to the ground, and murders the villages mercilessly. Solomon is captured to pan rivers for diamonds while his family escapes. his son, Dia, is later recruited by RUF as a child soldier.

this is horrifying. they basically brainwash the children, tell them their parents are dead, and this is a result of the government's cruelty and then hands them guns and trains them to shoot innocents and to kill. of course, these children are shot with drugs and alcohol and you watch as an innocent child transforms into a cold murderer.

the plot moves on like this: Solomon finds a HUGE diamond which he hides. RUF wants the diamonds and so does Colonel Coetzee. Solomon just wants his family back and will offer the diamond to Archer if he can get his family back. Archer wants the diamond to buy his way out of the God-forsaken country.

along the way, Archer meets Maddy, played by Jennifer Connelly, a journalist who is seeking a story on blood diamonds, to expose the truth to the world. there is mutual attraction but both scoff at each other's ways.

Archer scoffs at Maddy's idealism that writing a story can change an already fucked-up world.
Maddy insists that the world has always been fucked-up anyway "but good is being done everyday. just not by you".

on this quest for the diamond, Archer's bad-boy attitude is slowly chipped away and he is gradually shown to be humane after all, if not for his life's conditioning. at the end of the day, a quest borne from greed melts into a journey of compassion, a barter trade for mutual benefits turns into an outpouring of selfless brotherly love.

"sometimes, i wonder if God can ever forgive us for what we do to one another. but i look around and i realise, God has left this place a long time ago," says Archer to Maddy. and yet, despite the many violent deaths in the country, Africans just don't leave their home. i don't understand it but i've seen this in other movies and read about it in books. what stays with me is how many different characters repeat the same sentiment that once you're a part of Africa, you can never leave it behind.

there is an old saying that attributes African soil's red colour to all the blood that has been shed upon it. i believe it is so. since the dawn of time, the African people have suffered in ways no other peoples have, and for ages no other peoples have.

when all the adventure is over, Solomon ends up in London and as he walks along the street in a daze, he sees in a display window, an exquisite diamond necklace. it is beautiful, i admit. but as he watches in pain, i look at the same piece of jewellery with a sense of surrealism too. how much blood has been shed for that one diamond? how is it possible???

Solomon had asked Archer:

"You're 31 and you have no wife? no children? no home? but you have money? but not enough? and when you find this diamond, you'll have enough money? then you'll get a wife and children?" to which Archer replies, "probably not".

"You confuse me," Solomon says.
"That makes the two of us," admits Archer.

where it is all bling-bling for the world out here, people are losing their loved ones and dying for the stupid rock that they don't even want.

+++++


since 1992 after approval from the UN, the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) has been set in place to certify the origin of diamonds for sale - they are to be free from conflict areas.

of course, policies are discussed in comfortable rooms by men who live somewhat luxurious lives. still, they make a difference, even if it's not free of abuse - yet.

the least we can do now is to check the origin of the diamonds we purchase, if we do. the same slogan applies - if the buying stops, the killing will too.

it's that simple.