Blood Diamond

Saturday night, I saw a very intense, but very well done, movie: Blood Diamond.

If you can handle so much gore (really, you're not supposed to be able to handle it), Blood Diamond conveys powerful themes. It effectively juxtaposes western comfort and abstraction with the hell on which it often depends. The opening scene, for example, flashes between a rebel raid on a Sierra Leon village and a three-piece-suit UN meeting on curbing the flow of conflict diamonds. The western response was farcically disproportionate to reality.

Basically, the movie was about exploitation: of civilians, of the land, of the poor. Often, movies about social justice issues turn out too Michael-Moore-esque, a fate that Blood Diamond avoids. It is not about blaming everyone in particular, or simply conveying a political message; rather, it examines the sordid reality we all inhabit, whether knowingly or unwittingly. In the course of the film, two of the three protagonist discovered how he or she exploited the agony of others; they lived off of hell, either by fueling it or sensationalizing it (through journalism). This they discovered not on a geopolitical level alone, but through their personal interactions with those around them. The third protagonist, one of the damned condemned to hell by forces beyond his control, shone as a ray of hope and redemption. The personal microcosm that made the movie so engaging resonated with my conviction that, when dealing with social justice issues, we must examine our own activity according to the principles with which we critique society: am I looking out for the weakest among us? do I welcome the marginalized among my neighbors? do I encourage others to freely and creatively use their gifts?

Final thought: the movie made me return to an excellent book I read over the summer: War, Evil, and the End of History by Bernard-Henri Levy. This was quite a find in a used bookstore a year ago. Henri-Levy, a French professor of philosophy, parachuted into some of the darkest conflict zones in the world (Angola, Burundi, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Columbia). There, he interviewed suicide bombers, child soldiers, derelict civilians, and drug lords (it's from his book that I borrow the language of "hell" and "the damned" that I use above; they refer to a place or persons which have lost all meaning, all continuity with the past, all presence today, and all hope for the future). Henri-Levy's mission, as he discovered it in writing his book, was to give voice to those ghosts, not in general (westerners are fond of generalities, which are more comfortable and manageable than personalities), but in particular. In this way, he could give the people he met a small purpose and meaning in life, because someone else would listen to them. By having an audience, they discover their story. His "adventures," as he called them, also shook him out of the comfortable theories of the West by literally dropping him into a world where every neat philosophy he had ever taught went up in smoke. "Evil," in these conflict zones, is not an archaic religious idea, or an event overcome by democracy and human rights, or a matter of perspective; nor are passion and commitment always good, nor are the conquered always victims; evil is not an idea at all, but a reality, or, better yet, a non-reality, for it obliterates reality. It infects those with power, crushes those indifferent to it or powerless before it, enlists the naive, and negates everyone. Without warning, it destroys cities, towns, and families, leaving living ghosts to wander amid the rubble of their lives that will never be rebuilt. Without facing this "reality," we cannot understand redemption or envision its surprising possibility. I am thankful that a movie like Blood Diamond can put us, even for only two hours, in a world where our assumptions and values are sorely put to the test.