Why It Is Oscar Worthy ?!

Rating: 9/10 (26 July 2008)

What an unconventional plot! This movie is beautifully scripted, directed, and acted. It possesses within it's fiber all the makings of a truly perennial piece of cinematography. The catharsis effect is unimaginably great. I felt differing emotions such as urgency, remorse, travesty, love, and an everlasting friendship. This is indisputably beyond the pale - it is one of the best movies I have seen in the year 2006.
My only regret, is that I didn't get the 'theater' moment, as I sat in the chair, my eyes glued to the computer, my mind, body, and soul attached to the series of event, that unfolded and those to be unfolded. My heart felt for the characters - albeit the fictional addendum to the plot; to me it was outer-body moment, I was there, I was feeling.
The character Maddie was an interesting one. At first, I felt nothing special about this typical 'journalist role,' who is without mistake or folly, a seemingly beautiful and radiant young lady. However, I felt she was just another pretty face on TV. Indeed, I was wrong. Truly misguided, or was that the intent of the director? - Which further underscores his brilliance. For you see, even if it was unintended that she (Maddie)came off blah and dull initially, the development throughout the film captivated me. I believed her and the story she was selling to the audience.I felt her pain, her desires, and aspirations for a better life. This to me, was authentic and genuine - practically priceless.
Conversely, if indeed the director intended this successive, slow but gradual shift in emotional paradigms - then, he is masterful; making an intentional and climatic build-up. Either way, the character of Maddie was beautifully and meticulously constructed into an object of pure perfection. Her relationship with 'Danny' - the white South African was extraordinarily sincere and unconventional. One can't help if (s)he is endowed with a God-given functioning heart not to gush and glee over the beautify and sincerity that lay in the relationship both in death and life.
The film is also jam-packed with numerous elements of sub-plots, themes, and motifs. Due to the constraints of time and to sustain your interest in reading this post I shall offer a succinct listing of these. Love, manipulation, intra-racial subjugation, and finally, hope. As the credits role, I am left with an emotional conflict between redemption and loss. Two very integral emotions that seems to fill the void that was generated at the movie's beginning and so, I was feed. Not my usual preferred climatic ending - perhaps, some would justly argue - an anti-climatic result. Either way, in this case beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but it lays underneath the curtains of this film. From start to finish it was truly exceptional.
Oscar worthy, absolutely! Insofar as, it could represent a quintessential message of civil war, continental robbery, and destruction that long predicated and marshaled the United Nations' agenda to do exactly what it's doing now; stopping the blood shedding via 'Blood Diamond' or otherwise.