"Blood Diamond" has a point, but who will listen?
Source: Reuters
By Bob Tourtellotte LOS ANGELES, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The message in new movie "Blood Diamond" is clear: know the history of a precious gem before buying it. But whether moviegoers pay attention to this "message movie" is a big question for the film's makers. From the early days of Hollywood, writers, directors and producers have cranked out films that addressed social or political issues, including 1915's controversial "The Birth of a Nation" and 1967's "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," both of which dealt -- in vastly different ways -- with race in the United States. This year is no exception with films like "Flags of our Fathers" commenting on war and politics while the United States is at war and "Man of the Year," satirizing U.S. elections. But the box office record for major studio movies with social or political agendas is mixed, so generally speaking, major studios shy away from them. "Flags" has earned only $33 million since its October debut as people did not want to consider its anti-war themes while troops fought in Iraq. "Man of the Year," released ahead of the recent U.S. elections," earned only about $37 million. "Hollywood's studios only deal with a problem when it's safe to deal with that problem," said Howard Suber, author of "The Power of Film" and a professor at the University of California Los Angeles. As a result, message movies are mostly made by independent filmmakers, as was this year's global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." It earned $24 million at U.S. box offices and became the No. 3 documentary of its kind by luring environmentally conscious audiences more than mass markets. Message films that do win big audiences and major studio backers often center on lesser known topics or are released well after controversies were addressed by governments or other institutions. Such is the case with "Blood Diamond." BUYER BE AWARE The movie, which debuts on Dec. 8, is at first an adventure thriller with a big-name star, Leonardo DiCaprio, who can lure mass audiences. But the movie does not hide the fact that its chief villains are "conflict diamonds," which are illegally mined gems whose profits buy guns and fuel wars. "Blood Diamond" tells of a bond between an ex-mercenary from Zimbabwe (DiCaprio), who smuggles diamonds out of war-torn Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, and a poor fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) whose son is kidnapped by rebels and trained to kill. DiCaprio and director Ed Zwick told reporters they don't want to harm the industry so much as make people aware of checking whether a gem was mined legally. If not, don't buy. "(People) have to use their best judgment and ask the right questions because ultimately diamonds are a source of economic stability in Africa," DiCaprio said. Indeed, Africa generates around $8.4 billion worth of diamonds each year, and the industry employs about 10 million people globally, according to the World Diamond Council. While conflict diamonds are still a problem, the United Nations-backed Kimberley Process in 2003 has helped reduce their numbers, and now the industry claims that more than 99 percent of all diamonds comes from conflict-free sources. A council spokesman said attention to the movie has helped it focus people on improvements in the trade, and others noted a recent "KP Plenary" strengthened the Kimberley Process. Government and industry involvement helped make a movie like "Blood Diamond" more comfortable to back for a Hollywood studio like Warner Bros., which is distributing the movie. Similarly, Suber noted "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was a memorable movie about U.S. race relations in large part because it came out after the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in public places and integrated schools.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
