Reviewing Movies

At some point in the last three years Leonardo DiCaprio has grown a beard and beefed up considerably. He’s no longer the reticent willowy lover boy of Romeo and Juliet fame. I noted the change in discussing The Departed but in Blood Diamonds all pretence at innocence is gone. This guy not only fights his own battles but is often the aggressor. When he goes to meet his crime boss after losing a fortune in diamonds he approaches him with the kind of nonchalance that says, if you’re going to kill me get it over with.

The violence that is portrayed onscreen mirrors the kind of genocide that led Romeo Dallaire to a mental breakdown. We see children who haven’t reached puberty being trained to be blood-thirsty killers. First white men engaged in the trade of human beings for slavery; then they discovered ivory and rhino horns, oil, soil to grow coffee, and diamonds. All in their turn have served to disrupt the lives of indigenous Africans. In most cases the profits have lined the pockets of a corrupt few and led to the slaughter and dislocation of local populations. The flood of new money serves to provide more efficient means to fuel ancient hatreds and enmities. People don’t seem to have names; they have roles to play in the meat grinder that is life; here today and gathering flies on rotting corpses the next. Take a traditionally nomadic society separated from the ones they love and the need to fulfill sexual needs by whatever means possible and throw Aids into the mix and you have a population where a substantial proportion is infected. Add children made vulnerable by the lack of adult supervision and tropical diseases are decimating the young. Life here is tough enough without ethnic groups fighting one another.

I’m no judge of whether truth and reconciliation is working in South Africa, but it would seem that the entire continent could use some. I’m not sure that I buy Leo as an action anti-hero but the thing sure blows up real good, the bullets fly, and the bodies keep piling up.