Leonardo DiCaprio – The ‘Last Rhodesian’ in Hollywood

Duncan Clarke *                                           

One has ‘arrived’ if pictured in glorified celluloid and technicolour by Hollywood.  Indeed, Rhodesians there might have reached their zenith when Leonardo DiCaprio became ‘the Rhodesian’, described as a soldier of fortune or quasi-mercenary, found astray in war-torn Sierra Leone, in Blood Diamond in 2006.

The film was a knockout success. It put this Rhodesian, aka ‘Danny Archer’, on the world’s cinematic map. DiCaprio even received an Oscar nomination. Not bad for a boy from the bush. Rhodies, even Zimbos, were proud of him.

Here was a Rhodesian gunrunner, his family killed in the bush war, likewise as one veteran of 32 Battalion in South Africa’s border war, put on display, with the Rhodesian accent and all. It’s a tale I wrote about in The Last Rhodesians, 2022.

Once out of jail in Liberia, Archer goes in search of a rare, valued pink diamond: to find it, sell it and then leave the continent, forever. With charm and brutality, he tracked down the elusive stone but died in this quest before final exodus from the Dark Continent: perhaps not unlike Rhodesians who died in Zimbabwe or elsewhere in Africa.

Generally, DiCaprio mastered our accent well with only a few minor linguistic slips: the pronunciation of ‘Shona’ one, sounding like ‘Showna’. No one from home would have said it that way. A few other phrases, too, sounded off-kilter.

As DiCaprio indicated, he had spent time with locals and drinking beer with guys from South Africa’s military, likely ex-Rhodesians, too. Yet there are many differences between classic South African and Rhodesian speech — hence the small if telling errors in phraseology and accent, despite that DiCaprio worked tirelessly with the language coach on Blood Diamond, Tim Monich, to immerse himself in that old forgotten culture and its distinctive tones.

For an American oke, Leo’s effort came close to authenticity, in my view. But according to critics — who no doubt, always, know far better — the accent was wrong, or divisive: really?

One fount of eternal wisdom, from The Daily Show, Trevor Noah from South Africa, slammed DiCaprio’s accent, saying he sounded like ‘a drunk Australian’. Little did the then 37-year-old Noah know about Rhodesia, even Zimbabwe, or the Aussies. He would have been all of one year old at the date of Rhodesia’s demise. I wonder, too, if he has ever been there – post-1980.

Anyhow, so much for the talk-show host’s acoustic and phonetic skills, let alone any knowledge on the matter: actually, Trevor sounds to me more like a punch-drunk South African. Or maybe the remark was Noah’s idea of jest: not the sort always loved in Southern Africa? But then, he’s a comedian, and all’s fair game.

Some critics even claimed that Hollywood’s beloved star had inappropriately dropped into West Indian Creole, in snippets, at times. Not for me to say, but I seriously doubt it. For others, this accent would remain a source of derision and apoplexy, or so it appeared from a few film reviews about Blood Diamond.

An esteemed associate professor of African American studies and history at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Barbara Ransby, was indeed one less than easily charmed. DiCaprio’s character was amiss, she accused, when he had called himself Rhodesian ‘in defiance of majority rule’: did we not all know that the apartheid-like despicable Rhodesia was renamed Zimbabwe in 1980? Yeah.

Majority rule, it seems, had necessarily and magically ended any legitimacy to that unloved identity. It was off-limits, maybe. This deep-history revelation about historical chronology and the alleged terrible past suggested that Rhodesia had ‘disappeared’ at that moment. Yes, it had – de jure – but not the Rhodesians, nor the image, as revealed by Leo DiCaprio as Danny Archer.

A variety of right-on critics took umbrage, too, at Blood Diamond’s storyline, the language used, its depictions of Africa, with post-modernist concern about the film’s supposed lack of diversity and stereotyping. Another post-imperial critic, from England’s heart of rectitude, even found DiCaprio’s Rhodesian ‘character’ thoroughly unprincipled: no big surprise there. That has long been standard fare from most of the English establishment.

To shock and horror, Leo – sorry, Danny – had brandished the most flamboyant Rhodesian accent to grace the silver screen or heard in Hollywood in decades, maybe ever, and hence was thought ‘not particularly nice’. Well, sorry to say, in my mind, it was fairly authentic as a rendition, and after all only a movie, n’est-ce pas.

Whatever one may think about Leo DiCaprio or the screen-star’s unswerving involvement in the climatology cult — to the edge of classic bonkers — the use of language and accent was only one part of that actor’s wide and accomplished repertoire.

While many Rhodesians would not share Leo’s often ultra-woke views at large, many credited him with the fine effort made. Indeed, perhaps no film about ‘The Ugly Rhodesians’, with their lingo or authenticity, might ever be made again by Hollywood in today’s post-modernist epoch. It’s too far off-piste.

Perhaps Leo DiCaprio and alter ego, the ‘terrible’ Danny Archer, might be ‘The Last Rhodesian’, ever, to be extolled in any Hollywood extravaganza.

Another attempt to mimic Rhodesian history, or intent, with Zimbabwe implied as the historical backdrop, was the unashamedly fictional film, The Interpreter (2005), directed by Sydney Pollack, and starring Nicole Kidman.

Here the Aussie played a ‘white African’, Silvia Broome, acting as the United Nations interpreter in a critique of the Republic of Matobo (clearly echoing the adapted name for the Matopos National Park).

Motobo’s flag also bore striking resemblance to Zimbabwe’s, the regime led by a former ‘teacher’ (here read Rober Mugabe), one who was evil personified, but had in the ‘good old days’ of liberation been an upstanding fellow.

The then Acting Minister of Information, Chen Chimutengwende, castigated the movie for its evident historical parallels, saying that, actually, it was all part of an evil CIA plot to discredit the Harare government. Naturally, all this was true: just another devious plan fermented by the nasty imperialists. Of course, CIA had absolutely nothing better to do then, certainly not while Iraq was in flames.

Kidman tried hard but failed to produce any plausible Rhodesian accent, though perhaps she roughly articulated a form of Afrikaans-lite. Maybe she had spoken to Charlize Theron? Undoubtedly, it would have been beneficial if she had met Leo’s voice coach at the time.

Whatever its artistic merits, probably few, Kidman’s film had little real Rhodie or Zimbo content but might be thought as another ‘white African’ saga set partly inside some mythical, celluloid-shaped Zimboland. After all, Hollywood can’t do everything. Not can Leo.

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* The Last Rhodesians, available on Amazon, is distributed in South Africa by Protea Books, and found on Ex-Montibus Media’s website – https://exmontibusmedia.co.za/product/the-last-rhodesians-society-adrift/

www.duncan-clarke.com.