Think Twice Before You Go For That Diamond
---A review on Blood Diamond
As the hardest and most expensive precious stone in the gemological family, diamond is best known to people as the very iconic symbol for eternal love, as the
famous advertisement goes “A diamond is Forever”, and is thus the very gem chased after by those who in love. Indeed, jewelry bedecked with diamond never fails to wow the viewer, and nor does it fail to turn the lucky wearer into the target of attention in any crowd. It seems the charms of this precious stone, which
is produced mostly by geological forces and is of extreme rarity in nature, are
beyond all descriptions, but few people are aware of how ever they come to being, let alone know the story behind each processed ring or necklace with that glaring stone.
The latest Hollywood blockbuster Blood Diamond is a movie that will make you do some soul-searching before you go up with cash to that lustrous stone that you
used to think only of its capability of bringing people glamour – Indeed, you
may feel that gem lose its halo if you realize the stone actually cost an arm of
someone somewhere on this planet.
Set in 1999, Sierra Leone, Africa, Blood Diamond has a story background that is almost predictable, especially to those in the habit of reading international
news. The diamond-rich nation is plagued by perennial civil wars and ethnic conflicts, as the locals say “when a substance of great value is found, the locals
die.” The precious stone doesn’t seem to bring fortune to the people on this land; instead, its capacity of being sold – with enormous profits – to the outside world and then buying weapons back to support wars only deepens the disaster
. Solomon (Djimon Hounsou), a local fisherman whose family fall victim to the conflict, is forced to work in a mining camp for diamonds. Desperate to get his family together, and find his son, who falls into a rebel group’s clutches and is
brainwashed into becoming a terrible child terrorist, Solomon manages to hide a
huge pink diamond despite the risk of his life. During his detention after a government’s attack he meets with Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio, the same heartthrob in what is best known to Chinese audience, Titanic), a Rhodesia-born diamond smuggler who later learns the information of that pink diamond Solomon hides.
Realizing that the priceless stone can actually get him out of this continent,
which he has long been desired for, and promising to get the fisherman’s family
back, Danny talks his new African friend into working together to retrieve that
stone. Their mission seems to be an impossible one, though, in all this mess of
indiscriminating gun shooting and constant attacks from both the government and
the anti-government groups, and later another gang drooling at the stone. So here comes another important character, Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist who’s ready to go to any lengths to blow the lid off the illegal
international diamond trades and be the first reporter. A huge priceless stone,
three people from different cultural backgrounds with poles apart personalities
and goals, and all these vital gun fires and pressures from other gangsters; can
they finally fulfill what they are after respectively?
The performance of the three major stars is impressive. What amazes me most is
, though, the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio, who shows up in the previous HongKong
remake, The Departed, constantly uttering profanities, speaks in Blood Diamond
with a broad accent of African English. First I felt a little odd because I found his English this time sounded rather different than that in his other movies,
but then my Google search confirmed this fact. The vague romance between the smuggler and the unswerving journalist isn’t very well developed, but I doubt if the audience will really care very much about it.
Word has it that Blood Diamond has actually fuelled the public awareness of the origin of the precious stone, and people have begun to shun diamonds without a
certificate that identifies its non-African origin. Officially, in the year of
2000, the international public came up with something named “Kimberley Process”
, an agreement to certify the origin of gems and an effort to stop conflict diamond from going to the public market. It’s reported that it’s in general highly
effective, but such blood diamond still accounts for 1 – 2 per cent of the worldwide market today. With few viable measures of monitoring, and with little consciousness of the public, this figure may end up rising if military conflicts in
those diamond-laden regions do not look up.
If you don’t relish the prospect of appreciating a jewel with a diamond that
is blood-soaked, do make some effort to ascertain it’s kosher before you commit
yourself, and your money, to it.
Panpanpan.
