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Hollywood Plays Rough With Blood Diamonds

The actors aren't the only ones getting a rough ride in Blood Diamond, an action thriller about the illegal gem trade set during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war. 

The Warner Bros. film, due for release on Dec. 8, has the diamond industry concerned that moviegoers may walk out of cinemas with the idea that all diamonds are tainted.

The gem folks, including De Beers, which produces more than 40% of the world's diamonds, argue that they have largely fixed the problem of conflict, or "blood," diamonds--gems mined illegally by warlords and sold to buy weapons and pay soldiers. And they intend to ensure that the movie--which ties together the stories of a diamond-smuggling mercenary (DiCaprio) chasing a rare pink diamond, a fisherman (Hounsou) searching for his kidnapped son, and a reporter (Connelly) after a scoop--is viewed as a fictitious take on history.

Human-rights campaigners, however, welcome Hollywood's focus on the issue and say it has helped tighten industry oversight even before the film's release. In the run-up to the holiday period--peak season for diamond sales and blockbuster movies--the public spat makes an interesting study of how a big studio movie can threaten a $60 billion-a-year global retail industry, one that has previously thrived on its association with all things Hollywood, and how that business can fight back.

During an on-set interview, Zwick is quick to emphasize that "first and foremost, this is intended to be an entertaining and dramatic movie." At the same time, the man behind thirtysomething and The Last Samurai takes a storyteller's pleasure in his exploration of Sierra Leone's bloody conflict, which ended in 2002, and the way illegal diamond mining fueled that war. "The issues it evokes are universal, both personally and politically. You can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without thinking about child soldiers. You can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without thinking about refugees. You can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without thinking about bad governance," says Zwick. "So much is there in this small place."

You also can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without hiring some really big stars to get people to come see it. And luckily for Zwick, it's the kind of tale that draws in actors looking for an Important Subject. "There was something really authentic about the story," says DiCaprio, who agreed to play mercenary Danny Archer after meeting twice with Zwick and watching a 4-min. DVD featuring child soldiers and the aftermath of their battles that the director had patched together. Before shooting began, DiCaprio spent a month in South Africa meeting former mercenaries, undergoing military training and learning the local accent. Although he talked with several ex-mercs and diamond experts, it was a military adviser on the film, a Rhodesian (as some white citizens of Zimbabwe still call themselves) named Duff Gifford, who captivated him. "He's really the man who brought me to the understanding of what this culture was like, what it was like to fight in these wars, the painful things that he'd seen, the love he has for Africa and the bitterness he has as well," says DiCaprio. And that's not all he learned. "They drink a hell of a lot of beer and Jägermeister," says the star, no wimp in the party department, with a chuckle. "That was their hard-core drink of choice: flaming Jägermeister shots, which I can't hang with."

For the other actors too, the movie was more than just a job: Connelly is an Amnesty International ambassador, and Hounsou has boyhood memories of refugees fleeing war in Liberia for his country, Benin. "To put light to some of the issues," he says, "not just blood diamonds but some of the other problems, it's a great thing to do for my continent."

The movie follows the fortunes of a soldier turned diamond smuggler who works with both warlords and an international diamond corporation. He gets into a scrape and needs to find a huge pink diamond hidden by a fisherman in forced servitude to said warlords. And he meets a gorgeous crusading journalist who knows he can help her blow the story wide open. Along the way, many unromantic acts are perpetrated in the pursuit of the gemstones.

The film is historical, but the history is recent. And since a diamond's worth is intimately connected with its significance for romance, the gem industry knows it can't be too careful about the film. The World Diamond Council (W.D.C.) hired crisis p.r. firm Sitrick & Co. to coordinate a reported $15 million campaign to counter the movie's message. Full-page newspaper advertisements detailed the measures diamond producers have taken to end the flow of conflict diamonds. An industry website, diamondfacts.org sprang up, retailers were encouraged to educate themselves about the issue, and Zwick was pushed to tout the complete success of the Kimberley Process, a diamond-policing mechanism instituted in 2002 (see sidebar), in the script. He declined.

"I'm not worried at all by the film as long as people get to know the facts," says Eli Izhakoff, head of the W.D.C. "We see this as an opportunity to make sure that people are aware of all the good stuff the industry has done." Rosalind Kainyah, until recently De Beers' London-based director of public and corporate affairs, is a little more direct. "I'm sure that Warner Bros. wouldn't want to harm Africa," she says. "So I believe they'll want to put the movie in a historic context."

Since Kimberley was created, the industry says, 99.8% of diamonds are conflict free. Activists say that the situation is better but that diamonds are the cause of continuing misery. Two weeks ago, when Kimberley Process members sat down to their annual plenary meeting in Botswana to discuss how the watchdog system was working, the pressure for tighter oversight had ratcheted up. Responding to a U.N. report that poor controls are allowing conflict diamonds from war-torn Ivory Coast to enter the legitimate trade through neighboring Ghana, where they are being certified as conflict free, the diamond industry agreed not only to send a group to Ghana to ensure that it was complying with its obligations but also to publish annual industry-wide production and trade statistics for the first time ever.

The gem folks say the decision had nothing to do with Blood Diamond. "The movie had no impact on the deliberations and outcome of the recent Kimberley Process Plenary," says W.D.C. spokesman Carson Glover. "The diamond industry began confronting the problem of conflict diamonds long before Hollywood was aware of it and will be focused on it long after Hollywood loses interest." Activists, though, say the W.D.C. was much more proactive at this Kimberley Process meeting than in the past. "I think that the upcoming film must have had an impact on their moves to support calls to strengthen the Kimberley Process," says Susie Sanders, a campaigner with Global Witness, a diamond watchdog group. "We had raised Ivory Coast as a serious issue last year, but the industry reacted to it quite late in the day [and little was resolved]. This year it was very different."

Perhaps the industry would have acted anyway, or perhaps all the publicity nudged it forward a year or two. Whatever the case, it's hard to imagine that the rift between the gem biz and show biz is going to be permanent. While DiCaprio says he would no longer let any date of his wear diamonds, the years of jewelers lending free baubles to stars and their wives have to count for something. Come Oscar time, we'll see who gets iced out.

The Blood Diamond by  David Harewood 

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