In-depth review of The Original Diamond
At first glance the rating was very high, so I downloaded it and was ready to have a good look, but the musical mishmash at the beginning confused me and made my head spin, so I put it aside for the time being and will watch it later.
I had nothing else to do at the weekend and found a surviving film on my phone, so I watched it with patience and realised that there was something really remarkable about it.
The director gives us a more realistic scenario (forgive me if I don't agree, my brain is buzzing after watching it), the actors speak their own language, and the music always feels out of place in the scenario, making it feel like a mess, and when you're not in a good mood you might turn it off in a few minutes.
But perhaps the film is meant to present us with such a noisy and chaotic scene, just like the hero. His life is already disorganised and at the beginning of the story, the protagonist's life is shown to be chaotic and rushed. Customers enter the shop followed by noisy discussions, phone calls come one after another, the protagonist's mouth is constantly talking and rushing is almost the norm in his life. At the same time, the protagonist is in a lot of trouble at the beginning of the story, constantly in debt, with a bad reputation, and a selfish, brash and lying guy.
The director portrays these elements as a reaction to our real lives, where a thousand things are going on and we still have to make some sense and headway to ensure that our lives are not like this.
But the director also shows us a different side of the protagonist, in his return to his family, his slight obedience to his wife and his verbal concern for his children, which again draws the protagonist back from life, when he is equipped with a human touch.
But the protagonist is, after all, a gambler, and his willingness to stake all his fortune on what he hopes will be a bet, and to watch the outcome with anticipation, means that his life is ultimately a tragedy.
The plot is actually quite simple: the protagonist buys a unique raw diamond, hoping to make a fortune, but an NBA star borrows it. The star is supposed to return the diamond the next day, but something goes wrong, so the protagonist tries to recover it and bring it to the auction on time.
In the process of recovering the diamond, the protagonist is under increasing pressure from multiple debt collectors, his family is in crisis due to an affair, and the protagonist pawns the jewellery to gamble with the cash in a bid to make a comeback. However, the original diamond does not fetch the high price expected and the debt collectors even threaten the protagonist's life.
Desperate, the protagonist decides to take a big gamble, and he succeeds, multiplying his $150,000 several times to over a million. Just when he thinks his life has gone past a low point, the debt collector sends him to hell with a bullet without patience, and the dead body still wears an ecstatic smile on its face. It is a moment of deep irony.
The film may be more about expressing for us the tragedy of a chaotic life and the ultimate end of an irrational gambler, or perhaps more about bringing people away from the noise of life and back to their families to feel the peace of that moment.