Cinema - Blood Diamond

If you’re a film-maker with a serious point to make, you have to work out how to pitch your film. Do you make it big to appeal to the widest possible market? Or do you plump for the art-house niche, and indulge the tricky issues in even trickier formats? Whilst the second option puts you at risk of preaching to the already converted, the first leaves you needing to convince the critics that your mainstream drive has a political motive, rather than a bid for big box office dollars.

Director Edward Zwick went for the mainstream option with his recent picture ‘Blood Diamond’ and scored a populist winner (it was nominated for five Oscars). Its message is clearly a serious one - the story of the scandalously corrupt South African diamond industry as told by the honourable black man, Soloman Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), the morally defunct white man Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the voice-of-conscience journalist Maddy (Jennifer Connelly). The liberal press had reservations, though: the New York Times and the Guardian criticised the DiCaprio character for making an all-too-easy transition from flawed diamond smuggler to Africa-saving-hero via his romantic liaisons with the (white) photographer Maddy, which threatened to eclipse the film’s real subject. A subject that deserves our attention: Lewes Amnesty International have planned a campaign around Blood Diamond’s screening at the All Saint’s tonight, handing out flyers to customers on their way in. If the movie needed external validation, it seems it has got it. ER