the sword and the spirit

I caught an airing of Blood Diamond on basic cable not too long ago. In other words, heavily edited for tv. And yet. Did I feel cheated? Somehow robbed of a truer experience, short of actually purchasing a one-way ticket to one of Africa's most morally-deficient cesspools? Was it not a genuine depiction because I missed out on some f-bombs and a few extra glimpses at human brutality?

People who claim that some movies just need to "go there" are kidding themselves. People who "go there" are weak - taking the easy way out. Anyone can do edgy nowadays. Film festivals are full of pretentious, supposedly-first-rate-poke-fun-at-the-mores-of-society pieces of garbage. A couple decades ago, it wouldn't have been garbage. Because it would truly have been eye-opening and worth it's weight in shock value - waking people up to the idea that there are several different states of mind to consider out there.

Now? Now, it's just embarrassing. And what's worse is that the consumers just eat it up. We are spoon-fed trash and, rather unlike the little orphan Oliver who bravely approached the master, we are flaccid and complacent receivers of this trash. We do not expect more. So we do not get it.

Blood Diamond was an exceptional movie. Frightening. Because it was supposed to be. Ugly. Because it needed to be. And I never want to see it again. Because it did its job.

Back in high school, after seeing What's Eating Gilbert Grape, I had to defend my honor in the face of enjoying the acting of Leo DiCaprio when all the little girlyheads thought I liked him because his face was all over Teen Beat. Crushes are for suckers. That kid is brilliant. And I knew it then.

But Djimon Hounsou absolutely steals every scene he's in, and some that he's not. He is the heart of this movie. The frightened, wretched and vengeful yet redemptive heart of this movie. I truly believed in his suffering as Solomon, whose entire life is utterly destroyed by the Sierra Leone Civil War, as he watches his family torn from his grasp and his son taken over to rebel forces, brainwashed such that, later on, he does not even acknowledge his father. Here is a man, caught up in a vicious and bloodthirsty world and involved in a race to the finish with greedy, manipulative, and desperate figures when his real wish is to return to and protect his family, no matter the consequences.

There is an especially riveting and intense scene in which Solomon beats a man to death with a shovel. There are two things I learned from this scene:

1. While informing a friend later of my horror and fear during this scene, he replied, "Man, you should've watched the real thing, unedited." Why? Because somehow it would mean more? Somehow, it could have been more brutal to actually see the results? Pardon me for not having to see to believe that the man attacked was deader than a doornail. I got the idea. And it was horrific. It was a frightening moment of insanity - perfectly performed by Hounsou. And, again, it did its job.

2. I kind of wanted to see more. I hated that man Solomon killed. I found myself perched on the edge of my couch, gritting my teeth and willing him to hit harder. And to never stop. Perhaps I'm not the prudish, self-righteous viewer I claim to be. I felt vindication afterwards. I wanted that man dead the whole time. Now, I think of myself as a relatively compassionate person. Scratch that, not even relatively - most of the time, no matter the circumstance, I'm attempting to be as unbiased as I can - to consider all sides. Because, deep down, we are all human and humans make mistakes and blah, blah, blah. But this man, Poison, played to a peerlessly disgusting point by David Harewood (whom I'd never heard of then and not since) was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad man.

Should I be watching something like this? Something that boils my blood so? Should I subject myself to situations that invoke that kind of behavior from me? On one hand, I appreciate the ability to see within myself like this. When I have the opportunity to watch a realistic world unfold in unreal time. Because you notice things about yourself when you watch movies that wake you up. You realize your basest desires. And, if you're lucky, you begin to understand them. What their triggers are. You can be less ashamed of the natural man and be more accustomed to how to deal with it when he roars his ugly head and tells you to beat a man to a bloody pulp with a rusty shovel.

On the other hand, do I relish the welcoming of the natural man? Is it something I look forward to, as my friend relished in informing me that I should see that shovel scene in all its glory? Is it a step too close to the line?

People watch movies for several reasons - to be entertained, to be enlightened, to be anything but bored, etc. I'm one for the formermost of those reasons. I watched Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and had nightmares for days. That entire movie was a lesson. A lesson we already should have learned. Long ago. It was cheap to pull at heartstrings that were already vulnerable and attune to the suffering of both Jews and children, separately and together. I learned nothing from that movie except that the Nazis were terrible and the Holocaust need never to have occurred if people would only look at one another through a child's eyes. I also learned that true friendship knows no bounds. And that school-aged children are stupid and not actually aware of what's going on around them. Innocence is one thing. Obliviousness is another. Children are rarely the latter.

But when I do watch a particularly enlightening movie. Or one of those "sad, but true" films, I find myself reacting probably as if it were really happening. Sometimes because it has. Sometimes because it is. And often because it could. It's too much. Yay for the directors who think they're frontiersman, pushing envelopes that have already been mailed and returned, but I think film should mostly be fun. Escapism. If you wanna throw a lesson in there somewhere, go ahead but number uno, don't insult our intelligence by taking the low road to teach people what they already know and numero two, try going conservative. After all, that's the minority now. THAT'S edgy!