ENG 4U
Archetypes of Tragedy
Blood Diamond Movie Info
Overview
Director:
Edward Zwick
Writers :
Charles Leavitt (screenplay)
Charles Leavitt (story)
Release Date:
8 December 2006 (USA)
Key Characters
Danny Archer
Solomon Vandy
Maddy Bowen
Colonel Coetzee
Dia Vandy
Captain Poison
Benjamin Kapanay
Rudolf Van De Kapp
Key Lines from Blood Diamond
[first title card]
Title card: Sierra Leone, 1999
Title card: Civil war rages for control of the diamond
fields.
Title card: Thousands have died and millions have
become refugees.
Title card: None of whom has ever seen a diamond.
-----Troop Leader: Here we say that the freedom is in
your hands, so if you go against us, so go your hands.
Soldier: [Before chopping off the hand of a man]
Short sleeve or long sleeve?
-----Commander Zero: Wait, wait. Wait, my friend. This
is the thing you want? Here.
[Commander Zero pours diamonds from a can in
Danny's hands]
Commander Zero: So many I not know what do
with them all. - Hey, Archer, next time, you bring
satellite TV, eh? I wanna see Baywatch.
Danny Archer: Ja. Ja, ja.
-----Danny Archer: In America, it's bling bling. But out
here it's bling bang.
-----Danny Archer: [to Maddy Bowen] you come here
with your laptop computers, your malaria medicine
and you little bottles of hand sanitizer and think you
can change the outcome, huh?
Rehm
Danny Archer: American, huh?
Maddy Bowen: Guilty.
Danny Archer: Well, Americans usually are.
Maddy Bowen: ...Says the white South African?
Danny Archer: Ts ts ts ts. I'm from Rhodesia!
Maddy Bowen: We say Zimbabwe now, don't we?
Danny Archer: Do we?
Maddy Bowen: Last time I checked.
M'Ed: This my country, man. We here long 'fore you
came - long after you gone.
-----Maddy Bowen: ...the people back home wouldn't buy
a ring if they knew it cost someone else their hand.
-----Danny Archer: T.I.A. This is Africa
-----Danny Archer: So you're a fisherman, ha? What do
you catch mostly?
Solomon Vandy: Fish.
-----Danny Archer: That makes us partners.
Solomon Vandy: I am not your partner!
-----Solomon Vandy: [out of breath] He is my son. I am
his father. I must go find him. Go ahead, shoot me if
you want, but I will go find him.
Blood Diamond
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ENG 4U
Archetypes of Tragedy
Danny Archer: So you think because your intentions
are good, they'll spare you, huh?
Benjamin Kapanay: My heart always told me that
people are inherently good. My experience suggests
otherwise. But what about you, Mr. Archer? In your
long career as a journalist, would you say that people
are mostly good?
Danny Archer: No. I'd say they're just people.
Benjamin Kapanay: Exactly. It is what they do that
makes them good or bad. A moment of love, even in a
bad man, can give meaning to a life. None of us knows
whose path will lead us to God.
-----Maddy Bowen: You lost both your parents.
Danny Archer: That's a polite way of putting it, ja.
Mum was raped and shot and uh... Dad was
decapitated and hung from a hook in the barn. I was
nine... boo-hoo right?
-----Danny Archer: That diamond is my ticket out of this
God forsaken continent.
-----Danny Archer: Sometimes I wonder... will God ever
forgive us for what we've done to each other? Then I
look around and I realize... God left this place a long
time ago.
-----Danny Archer: Out here, people kill each other as a
way of life. It's always been like that.
-----Captain Poison: You think I'm a demon, but that's
only because I have lived in Hell.
-----[as they were encountering some child soldiers while
driving]
Danny Archer: Drive right at them, they'll panic.
Benjamin Kapanay: No, do you know where the
word "infantry" comes from, it means: Child Soldier.
They're just children.
-----Maddy Bowen: Three out of five ex-boyfriends
polled think I need to be in a constant state of crisis.
Maybe I just give a shit.
-----Solomon Vandy: I understand White people want
our diamonds, yes. But how can my own people do this
to each other?
-----Solomon Vandy: So when people in your country
read it
Rehm
[her article about the war]
Solomon Vandy: , they will come help, yes?
Maddy Bowen: Probably not.
-----Solomon Vandy: [trying to rescue his son] Dia,
come on.
Dia Vandy: Leave me alone!
Solomon Vandy: Dia it is me, your father. Let's go.
Dia Vandy: I don't know you! Fisherman!
[to the other soldiers]
Dia Vandy: Get him, get him!
-----Solomon Vandy: Dia, What are you doing? Dia!
Look at me, look at me. What are you doing? You are
Dia Vendy, of the proud Mende tribe. You are a good
boy who loves soccer and school. Your mother loves
you so much. She waits by the fire making plantains,
and red palm oil stew with your sister N'Yanda and the
new baby. The cows wait for you. And Babu, the wild
dog who minds no one but you. I know they made you
do bad things, but you are not a bad boy. I am your
father who loves you. And you will come home with me
and be my son again.
-----Maddy Bowen: Tell me where you are, and I will
come help you.
Danny Archer: [after seeing his blood mix in with
the red earth] I'm right where I'm supposed to be...
-----[last title card]
Title card: In January 2003, forty nations signed
"The Kimberley Process" - an effort to stem the flow of
conflict diamonds.
Title card: But illegal diamonds are still finding their
way to market. It is up to the consumer to insist that a
diamond is conflict-free.
Title card: Sierra Leone is at peace.
Title card: There are still 200,000 child soldiers in
Africa.
------
Blood Diamond
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