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“Peace Corps types only stay long enough to realize they’re not helping anyone. Government wants to stay in power until they’ve stolen enough to go into exile somewhere else. And the rebels, they’re not sure they want to take over; otherwise, they’d have to govern this mess,” Leonardo DiCaprio’s Danny Archer rambles before asking the bartender, “But, TIA, right, Me’d?”
“TIA,” he replies; this is Africa.
“Blood Diamond” is one of many 2000s-films about Africa that have faded from most of cultural memory. There’s quite a library of films like it: “The Last King of Scotland,” “The Constant Gardener,” “Hotel Rwanda,” “Lord of War,” “Black Hawk Down” and “Tears of the Sun” are all notably violent and give the picture of Africa as a hellish landscape of dictators, warlords, gangs and countless victims. This reputation wasn’t necessarily ill-deserved: the 1990s saw an exceptional period of extremely violent warfare throughout the continent. But what separates “Blood Diamond” from the rest is its protagonist: Danny Archer is a Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) refugee, a former South African soldier and mercenary, who is now trying to make a huge buck so he can leave everything behind. The journey of most 2000s Hollywood-in-Africa films tends to be of those caught in extraordinary circumstances, but “Blood Diamond” chooses its main character to be a white ex-apartheid soldier and mercenary, which was certainly bold for its genre and probably could not have been made today.
The plot synopsis is rather basic: Sierra Leone is in the grip of (the very real) civil war between the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Archer is there to make enough money to finally leave the continent. Mende villager Solomon Vandy (played by an intense, emotional Djimon Hounsou) wants to recover a special diamond he had discovered while under RUF captivity, but more importantly to find his kidnapped son within the RUF’s ranks. American journalist Maddy Bowen (played by Jennier Connolly) wants to uncover the diamond industry’s connections to the war trade. However, the journey the characters go through begins to change them, most importantly Archer. He channels his cynicism and past regrets to rescue Solomon’s son. It’s a film that questions whether good people doing bad things can change, and it offers the possibility that yes, they can. Archer may be a Rhodesian nostalgist, he may hold some crude views, he may be a mercenary, he may even use Afrikaaner slang slurs on Solomon and say “right now I’m the master” when stressed, but he pushes through all his flaws to do what is right. It’s not just about a diamond; it’s about helping the family that he himself never had.
The film has all the elements taken from the very real atrocities committed in the Sierra Leonese civil war, all in sober detail, but it also captures the dynamic between black and white Africans, as portrayed between Solomon and Archer. Solomon has gone through so much pain and hardship, but in many ways, he is still innocent. He is a villager who doesn’t understand Archer’s celibacy and calls out to an RUF patrol during an encounter, believing one of them to be his son (almost getting the two killed). Archer handles his trauma differently — having been the victim of Zimbabwean retribution on his family farm and participating in the profit-driven wars almost universal to all sides — with a bleak “everything’s going to hell” attitude that carries over in his actions. The two men, despite both of their physical and emotional troubles, reach a mutual respect for the other by the end that is genuinely touching. Archer also gets over his initial dislike of Bowen, finding her driving motivations to uncover real injustices more defensible than the usual sympathy-chasers (Bowen herself comments on the irony of humanitarian journalism in African conflicts: “It’s like one of those infomercials … little black babies with swollen eyes … dead mothers … severed limbs … it might be enough to make people cry about it … but it won’t stop it.”)
“Blood Diamond” isn’t revolutionary in storytelling. There’s nothing subversive, and most of the story’s expectations are met, but what does make it stand apart is the setting and the historically controversial protagonist picked to lead it. In a way, I think these choices contribute to the movie’s unofficial motto: “TIA – This is Africa.” It may be jaded, violent and with quite a politically charged past, much like Archer himself — but that does not mean it should be written off as a lost cause. That capacity to do good in the heat of the moment exists within most people, and I think it is a much-needed narrative in a media landscape dominated by edgy cynicism and gleeful irony.