Presenting real issues and its consequences

The movie Blood Diamond, set during the Sierra Leone Civil War, takes on serious issues of child soldiers and conflict diamonds. To more fully understand this issue, the term conflict diamonds needs to be better explained. Conflict diamonds are diamonds that come from war zones in Africa usually in civil war areas. They often include smuggled or illegal diamonds. In the case of the Sierra Leone Civil War, the diamond companies were driving and benefiting on the continuation of the war while reaping massive profits on both diamonds and gun sales. 

The ramifications for the viewer for taking on these emotional and controversial subject are wide ranging. The film's audience becomes limitedly informed about a very concerning issue, the death and destruction of people for diamonds. Very likely few of the films viewers have a broad base of knowledge of the Sierra Leone Civil War. The movie then plays a pivotal role in shaping the opinions of people about this conflict. The gives the film much power in a historical sense as it offers knowledge and gives people an event to think about and react to even though the movie is a not a documentary and is a hollywood narrative. It brings awareness to a problematic situation.

Picture of diamonds from the movie

Another consequence of using the African diamond trade in a blockbuster film is that is an easy vehicle for making money in the United States. Diamonds are a commodity in the United States, however, I know that before watching this film I knew little to nothing on the origin of diamonds. Knowing the origin and controversy of some diamonds would definitely intrigue me and possibly draw me to go to the movie. This also creates somewhat of a moral dilemma because by presenting and promoting the consumption of this movie for American audiences, the Sierra Leone incident is almost glorified as it was forever preserved as a piece of Hollywood even though also thousands of people died.

Truth or Fiction?

Historical inaccuracies in movies drive me absolutely crazy. I am under the firmest most staunch belief that if a filmmaker decides to include a serious subject or event, he should take on the research and present it in the most realistic way possible with the available information. I know, I know films are supposed to be fiction apart from regular and historical accuracies. Frankly, I don't care. It bothers me when I realize something in a movie isn't historical correct, it downgrades my view of the movie. Heck even animation movies, if something in it is too unrealistic, I get angry. For example, it drives me nuts that kid in the movie UP can catch a blimp on the back of a leaf blower. That's absurd and doesn't fit in with the way the rest of the narrative is presented.

This one of many reasons I love Zero Dark Thirty. It presents the Navy Seals raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound in a tremendously realistic fashion given the information that has been declassified and released. The length of the attack in the film, 27 minutes, even matches the length of the attack in real elapsed time, 27 minutes.

However, there are ways to draw off of history in ways that do not insult history in various ways. For example, The Dark Knight Rises uses terrorism in the main conflict of the plot. The villain, Bane, terrorizes Gotham mortifying its citizens. However, it doesn't take on historical events that have taken place in real life. Moreover, it also meets the serious issues in a serious way. An even though unrealistic things take place in this movie, it becomes all plausible within the world of Gotham. It seems realistic even when it is not.

Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty, the story of the manhunt and eventually attack that killed Osama Bin Ladin, begins with emergency response recordings from September 11th, 2001 with several minutes of just blank black screen. The beginning scene can be seen below.

This serves as a compelling and powerful frame for the rest of the narrative. This opening scene brings back a flood of emotions from September 11th, 2001. It was a tragic day in America where 3,000 innocent people lost their lives. The attack on that day is a moment where many people can tell you exactly when and where they were when the news broke. I was in 1st grade in Mrs. Nutterville's class, we were at lunch and one of the teachers had turned on a small TV in the cafeteria. Several of them stood around the TV watching in horror before shepherding kids away from the screen. I remember I was very very scared.

It is a day that remains engrained into the memories of the American people.

By starting the film in this way, it elicits all these emotions of fear and the desire for justice that prevailed after the attacks. It firmly entrenches the audience into the cause of the American CIA workers. Throughout the film, the audience seems to be pushed into willing to look past the torture and treatment of detainees of terror suspects. By framing the film with the 9/11 attacks, justice for the American victims becomes the primary focus for the viewer. It also sets the sequences of events into chronological order. 9/11 is the first event in the story of America's war on terror. The narrative builds from this point in sequence until Osama Bin Laden was killed in 2011. The physical content is also interesting. It is just a blank black screen as if it to suggest that the audio is so important that visuals were not needed for this portion of the film. . 

Another effect of the opening scene on the viewers is it sets up the film as almost documentary-esque. It brings in real emergency communications, not Hollywood script. The filmmakers would like to see this film as historical accurate, and this scene attempts to do that. Also, it frames the eventual idea that Zero Dark Thirty would become the average person's account and belief of what happened. The film wants to become a part of American historical culture.