This analysis of ‘Blood Diamond’ (2006) will consider how the screenplay’s five plot points create the story’s deep structure. These discrete story points include the 'Inciting Incident' in Act 1, 'Turning Points 1 and 2' in Act 2, and the 'Crisis Decision' and 'Climax' in Act 3. Spoiler alert: this structural analysis will reveal crucial plot moments; you may prefer to read this after viewing the film.
This movie’s back story is as follows: during a time of civil war in 1990’s Sierra Leone, Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), a Mende fisherman, finds a rare diamond while working in a diamond mine, and buries it, hoping to reclaim it later.
Any Hollywood movie’s 'Inciting Incident', which occurs usually in the first 1/2 hour, challenges the hero to respond to a new development or opportunity. To achieve that response, the hero must internally expand, irrevocably changing his life. The hero is then thrown into a series of escalating accommodations on his journey to understand and solve the Inciting Incident’s original problem. This film’s Inciting Incident occurs when Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) is imprisoned for smuggling, and there meets Vandy. He hears talk in the prison of the diamond.
Turning Point 1. After the two are released, Archer pursues Vandy, and proposes a deal: that with his military skills he’ll escort the fisherman back through hostile country to the mine to regain the diamond. They could then split the proceeds, which would give each of them a much better life.
A movie’s Midpoint usually provides the story with a coherence and symmetry that the audience feels unconsciously, and for this reason is important structurally. This movie’s Midpoint sees Archer confessing his checkered life to a journalist he met in a bar, Maddy Bower (Jennifer Connolly). He also reveals the atrocities committed against his family (torture and murder) by native Marxist rebels fighting against the (pre-Independence) white Rhodesian government. This explains much of his illiberal attitude to black African national independence movements.
Turning Point 2. The former Rhodesian mercenaries who have been active in the Sierra Leone civil war, try to kill Archer, but he kills 3 of them in a shoot-out. The mercenary captain (David Harewood), an old friend he had fought with in many battles, tries to trick him and take him out, but Archer anticipates it and kills the captain. However, Archer is seriously wounded.
Act 3’s Crisis Decision occurs when Archer sends Vandy ahead to the waiting helicopter at the hilltop; they are still being pursued by the Sierra Leone forces. He secretly drops the blood diamond in Vandy’s backpack. Vandy looks back and realizes that the injured Archer can’t continue, and intends to hold off the pursuing troops. He is torn, but realizes he must carry on for his family’s and people’s sake.
The Climax occurs sees Archer phone Maddy, the journalist, and ask if she can get Vandy a lawyer, to help him fight for his people. He mentions that Vandy has the diamond, which could be used to finance his struggle. She can hear that he’s injured, and he admits that he feels he is now receiving what a man such as he deserves. Maddy is devastated as he says goodbye. He dies on the hillside moments later, before the Sierra Leone troops arrive.
The story’s reversal (to a new stasis) sees Archer come to terms with the demons that have driven him since his family’s murder. It also sees Vandy become a spokesman for justice and democratic social renewal. After knowing Archer he better understands the complexity of Africa’s colonial history, with injustices being inflicted on both sides. The closing scene shows him standing to make a speech in a packed assembly hall.
Given the breathtaking arrogance of the political correctness that has swept into social and cultural discourse in recent years, it has become all but impossible for Western filmmakers to accurately portray black African social reality, or indeed native American social reality. The myths of the innocent, helpless 'native', perennially wronged, means the narrative has only one direction it can take. This film wanted to repudiate those tiresome, patently false 'tropes', but largely it failed.
We should note that the white protagonist is still portrayed as participating in the destruction of an assumed 'native paradise', though his own specific history is to be understood as mitigating. But the central myth of the innocent wronged native in an innocent, pure state of nature remains 100% intact. It is precisely such myths that make it possible for Africa’s many blood-drenched Marxist leaders to misgovern and strip away their nations’ wealth, while rejecting any criticism as collusion with forces of foreign imperialist interference.
