Blog 1

Blood Diamond and the Sense of Reality

 Why we go to the movies? It has different answers for each person. We are living in this life and we call it real. Our perceptions of reality mostly reflect our weaknesses as human beings. There are illnesses, wars or a lot of other elements that threatens our lives. We are struggling every day and most of us cannot win the battle of life. So, maybe some of us do not want to see challenges of real life in movies. Most of the audience want to watch movies that serves them the enjoyment of being a superhuman and easy to watch without too much questioning. Kracauer says: “As a matter of fact, many a genre has a hold on the audience because it caters to widespread social and cultural demands; it is and remains popular for reasons which do not involve questions of aesthetic legitimacy.”(p.156)

Blood Diamond (2006) is a very good example that can be questioned with respect to its success on reflecting the real-life events. I would not call this movie realistic for many reasons. First, I did not believe Di Caprio’s acting. He has something that does not fits with the character in the story. He is a very popular actor and may be my memory from his other movies make me feel like that. His accent was unnatural, and he does not seem like he lived south Africa for years. I think another actor who really lived there could have took this role, then it could feel more real and it would not be the distractive element for reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pBOLdZZT6s

Kracauer says: “Strangely enough, it is entirely possible that a staged real-life event evokes a stronger illusion of reality on the screen than would the original event if it had been captured directly by the camera.”(p.154) However we can’t find this level on the movie. Another element makes the movie unrealistic is hidden in the narrative. Most of the characters in the movie are either too good or too bad. Some south African groups kidnap children or makes massacres in towns. They portrayed as purely evil characters which coming from fairytales. On the other hand, we have Solomon and The Journalist Maddy. They portrayed as good and angel-like characters in any condition.  We never saw them questioning the right or the true. This really disturbed me as audience and felt me that I am reading a fairy tale.

 Blood Diamond has a historical and a political context. There could be similar people who get through similar challenges in that era in South Africa. However, the movie gives these characters a superhuman power. Solomon survives from nearly ten incidents throughout the movie that easily could have been fatal for him. Some of the gun fires were too violent that can cause a person’s death very easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3IjRccnFKI

 

 Another shocking detail in the movie is Solomon’s great navigation abilities. He is finding the diamond very easily after several weeks and several challenges even though some person digs all the same area to find it before him. Diamond only shows itself to the Solomon.

 

 

 

          Solomon also has a special power to find his family members in 3 minutes from 1 million people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni91mgwfJjo&t=10s

Later he is finding his son at the child soldiers camp just near their target. These details are really making the movie unrealistic and makes fun with the audience’s intelligence. These events have little chance to came true in real life. As a result, I think Blood Diamond is a movie that really pushes the edges of reality, but the tempo of the movie makes audience watch.

Bibliography

 Kracauer,Siegfried. Basic Concepts. Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen eds. Film Theory and Criticism 7th edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.(p.147-158)