Djimon Hounsou's first big role was in the socially conscious history lesson "Amistad." Director Edward Zwick has a thing for issue-oriented action movies ("Courage Under Fire," "The Siege," "Glory"). So when these guys and others got together to make a movie about African civil wars and the corrupt business practices that drive them, it was natural enough to assume that "Blood Diamond" would have serious themes.
But would it be entertaining? Especially since the film, which is set in Sierra Leone a few years back, doesn't shy away from the uglier aspects of recent West African conflicts: brutal combat, young boys kidnapped and brainwashed into becoming conscienceless child soldiers, mass amputations (some real victims of the practice appear in the film) and a refugee crisis of enormous scale. Many of these terrible conflicts have been financed by the selling of conflict diamonds.
Blood diamonds (as they are also known) are gems illegally mined in a war zone (usually by enslaved laborers) and sold clandestinely to unscrupulous multinational gem cartels. The point "Blood Diamond" hopes to impress on audiences is that whenever buying a ring or necklace,
"I wasn't personally going out seeking films with social or political messages just to do for the sake of doing it," said DiCaprio, who plays an amoral Zimbabwean gem smuggler, Archer, in the movie. "It has to have entertainment value. It has to be a good movie and convey a message without the audience really feeling like they're being preached to.
I felt like this script accomplished that, while being very representative of a huge issue in the world today: corporate responsibility." Director Zwick's longtime producing partner Marshall Herskovitz took the position that, if "Blood Diamond" told its story well, it didn't need to pander to notions of a good time at the movies. "This issue that there is somehow a conflict between being politically engaged or important and being entertaining doesn't really apply to how Ed and I think about making movies," the producer said.
"When you're a filmmaker, you're a communicator. And when I'm communicating correctly, that's inherently entertaining. That doesn't mean I'm trying to entertain people.
You can tell a dark story, you can tell a sad story, you can tell a happy story. ..
. It's all entertaining in the sense that it's connecting and it makes people have feelings when they're watching it." To its credit, Warner Bros.
turned to Zwick, Herskovitz, fellow producer Paula Weinstein and screenwriter Charles Leavitt ("K-Pax"), among others, after the studio wasn't satisfied with an earlier take on the conflict diamond theme that all agreed was too Indiana Jones in its approach. But while the new team took the story in a more realistic, historically informed direction, they also ensured that certain tried-and-true Hollywood conventions
To that end, the greedy Archer learns to become a better man while trying to retrieve a big raw diamond hidden by Solomon (Hounsou), a selfless fisherman who only wants to reunite his displaced family and save his son from child soldier hell. A spunky American reporter, Maddy (Jennifer Connelly), gets dropped into the action to provide something of a love interest for Archer and to give lectures that don't necessarily feel like lectures because she's so hot-looking. "We wanted to tell a story about the people," Weinstein explained.
"We didn't want a headline, say, 'We're going to make a movie about diamonds.' This is, for us, a film about two Africans, the conflicts and what they have suffered and their ability to make a bond." In another, semi-audience-friendly move, the real horrors of the West African civil wars have been underplayed for date-night sensibilities though that hasn't prevented some from leaving early screenings of "Blood Diamond" appalled by the brutality they've just seen.
"I couldn't possibly sit and watch if we were to realistically duplicate the kind of things that happened in that conflict, and you couldn't possibly expect an audience to," Hounsou noted. "So, in order to bring the awareness out, we had to tone it down tremendously. I mean, I wouldn't even give you an example of some of the atrocities that happened during that conflict.
" Hounsou hails from Benin, which is some 900 miles east of Sierra Leone. But even though it doesn't have diamonds or oil or other resources that outside interests covet, his country has had its share of corruption and civil strife. To Hounsou, it isn't really a matter of whether or not films that address international problems are enjoyable.
They are, simply, necessary. "As an African, of course I feel a need and a strong desire to be involved in films that deal with important issues," Hounsou said. "I think, nowadays, it is difficult because of our challenging lifestyles we're always running, running, running, chasing, chasing, chasing to really get an education the way we used to be educated through books and so forth.
So, a lot of the education that we get today, I feel, is through movies. It's unfortunate, but also it is fortunate. "The movie industry has a responsibility to tell compelling stories, stories that mean something, that change our lives and that make us reflect on the way thatwe treat one another and how we view other people from different continents.
" Noble sentiments. And probably ones American moviegoers who only want escapist entertainment don't care to hear. But don't complain to DiCaprio that his movie is too thoughtful or hard to take.
After months of shooting, mostly in South Africa and neighboring Mozambique,He has no patience for attitudes that don't take the state of the world into consideration. "What I was left with after spending time in Africa and this is not at all to sound trivial but there really was the power of the human spirit there." the movie star said.
"These people in Mozambique had been through a civil war for 30 years, four out of 10 people there supposedly have HIV or AIDS, the poverty rate ...
but literally, people were still dancing in the streets. The joy and the energy that they exuded to everyone was unbelievable. "It made me, when I came back home, not sort of want to listen to anyone's problems.
I don't want to hear about what we as Americans have to deal with.
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