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On the surface, Blood Diamond is a movie that anyone should be able to enjoy. It’s got good action, a heartfelt premise, and good performances from the three leads: Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, and Jennifer Connelly. Recently, however, the question of whether it accurately and fairly portrays the civil war that occurred in Sierra Leone has become inseparable from the merits of the film cinematically.
With the broader discussion of Hollywood films stereotyping and mischaracterizing Africa and African people picking up steam, consideration of where Blood Diamond fits into this narrative is important. It begs the question: Does Blood Diamond use the civil war in Sierra Leone as a prop for an action film, or is the movie genuinely interested in portraying the plight of the people involved in the crisis truthfully?
What Is Blood Diamond?
Blood Diamond is a political action-thriller. The film was released in 2006 and was directed by Edward Zwick (known for directing historical epics like Glory and The Last Samurai). Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, and Jennifer Connelly portray the lead characters in the film. The film was a modest success. It grossed nearly $172 million against a 100 million dollar budget and received five Oscar nominations (( Box Office Mojo; IMDB Awards. )). The story takes place in the year 1999 in Sierra Leone. A civil war has broken out, fueled by the smuggling of cheap diamonds. The RUF (Revolutionary United Front) is a rebel army wreaking havoc on the region (not that the military doesn’t do its fair share of misdeeds as well).
Solomon Vandy (portrayed by Djimon Hounsou) is a fisherman whose village is raided by RUF. In the raid, he’s separated from his family and forced to work at an RUF mining camp. Prior to the camp being infiltrated and the prisoners being evacuated by Sierra Leone militia, he stumbles upon a massive diamond. Rumors of this diamond spread in the prison that all the mining escapees are held at. It just so happens Danny Archer (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), a smuggler for Van De Kaap, one of the diamond companies indirectly facilitating the war by purchasing these blood diamonds, gets wind of these rumors and tries to find the diamond with the help of Solomon, under the guise of helping him find his family. Jennifer Connelly’s journalist character, Maddy Bowen, aids the duo on the dangerous journey to the abandoned camp and the diamond.
“Hollywood’s Problem”
Big-budget Hollywood movies deal in dramatics. These dramatizations, sometimes of real-world events, often involve generalizing (via the use of tropes and clichés) and, at times, outright lying. Sometimes it’s harmless: the gunslinger who strolls into town on the white horse is always a good guy, villains always stall and reveal their plan to the protagonist when they’ve got them in a position to defeat them, before a character dies, they give a monologue. Sometimes though, it’s not so harmless. Hollywood has been under fire lately for its continued stereotypical and downright wrong portrayals of Africa and Africans (and rightly so).
Whether it’s a matter of incorrectly portraying a region’s cultural heritage or language, or something more dubious and vile, like rooting a narrative in an African conflict and effectively treating the movie as a summer blockbuster (as seen in Tears of the Sun and Machine Gun Preacher), there’s been an apparent lack of compassion and authenticity in portraying the continent of Africa. This is especially damaging as media is the primary source of information for most people. When everything audiences see about Africa suggests that it’s a nation rife with civil war, murderous rebels, and disease (in addition to the numerous other negative tropes and stereotypes cast on the nation), that’s what people will believe it to be.
Is Blood Diamond Another Problematic Installment?
Blood Diamond does, in fact, fall victim to some damning tropes and clichés, as well as just general inaccuracies, about Africa. This ultimately creates some faulty Western reimaginings in certain regards. Danny Archer’s character arc stands out as a primary misstep. His character arc inches dangerously close to the white savior trope. The film’s very interested in redeeming his character. He starts as a complacent, self-centered smuggler, but his “one act of kindness” (helping Solomon get back to his family) redefines the meaning of his life. The details and time spent fostering a real relationship between Archer and Solomon help to rectify this trope. However, it’s still stereotypical and lessens the importance of the plight the people of Sierra Leone endure throughout the film. The premise (the civil war brought on by the sale of “blood diamonds”) in and of itself facilitates depicting some Africans as rebel fighters doing some pretty horrendous things.
This partially hints toward a notion of Africa (and specifically Sierra Leone, at least in this film) being a warzone, rich with these monstrous people, but this is where the African war genre portrayal topic gets blurred. The film being centered around the civil war in Sierra Leone probably does have a duty to show that kind of violence for authenticity’s sake. So, in this instance, it’s not as much the active effort to portray Africans as barbaric warmongers as it is capturing the dismay and horror of the civil war in Sierra Leone. A conversation about broadening the types of movies set in Africa can be followed up on by this point (i.e., Why does Hollywood only ever seem to make war movies in Africa; why can’t they make a sci-fi or action or insert genre movie based on the continent), but a war film does need to show the horrors of the war. Additionally, one of the smaller aforementioned inaccuracies, while maybe not being outright damaging to the representation of Africa and Africans, is Djimon Hounsou not speaking in an accent indicative of someone from Sierra Leone. This could be as cynical as the director thinking audiences would not mind or something closer to the lines of Djimon Hounsou not wanting to mischaracterize the accent, but there’s no way to know. It’s just odd and really feels like a lack of due diligence.
At The End Of The Day…
Ultimately, Blood Diamond isn’t a completely artificial and insensitive African war film. It does seem like it was trying to accurately convey the conflict that occurred in Sierra Leone. Through unashamedly bashing Van De Kaamp’s greed and artifice (the stand-in for what was in actuality De Beer Jewelers) and critiquing the complacency and indifference exhibited by Westerners in responding to tragedies in third world countries, the film does seem to have good intentions. It’s not a movie using the unfortunate happening of an African civil war as just the backdrop to a summer blockbuster. That being said, by perpetuating stereotypes and tropes, most blatantly, the white savior trope, and not giving credence to intricacies and doing the proper research to accurately portray all aspects of the area the movie takes place in, Blood Diamond does mildly contribute to the mischaracterization and stereotyping of Africa.
