The Constant Gardener (UK) (Focus Features) (2005) ***Year: 2005iMDB
Director: Fernando Meirelles Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz
After the impressive City of God, director Fernando Meirelles adapts John Le Carré's best-selling thriller. The Constant Gardener is a love story set against the strong background of corporate corruption at multi-national levels with entire countries being used as pawns in experiments that will help make the rich richer.
Fiennes plays Justin, a British official in Africa, who was never quite able to understand his wife's Tessa (Weisz) motivations and drive in her relentless quests to expose governmental wrongdoing and help the poor and the sick. Justin is however brutally forced to re-examine all his wife's actions as she is found murdered at the same time her work partner the local doctor Arnold (Hubert Koundé) suffers the same fate. The movie mixes flashbacks and forward story-telling as we get to learn both Justin and Tessa's lives before her murder as well as the investigations and discoveries that Justin makes after her death. We almost see the world through Justin's eyes from the doubts and incredulity that he showed towards Tess's actions (who herself was not telling him too much for fear of getting him involved and compromising his official position) to his discovery of Tess's true feelings and intentions, her love and determination that he sometimes failed to acknowledge in their last few years.
The story of the movie is entirely fictional, but not totally unbelievable. Do indeed big drug corporations use African countries as guinea-pigs for their new products, ruthlessly covering up their failures? Possible. And perhaps they do a good enough job at covering their tracks that a story based on facts is not yet possible. But watching The Constant Gardener as a work of fiction I found it a bit too manipulative in its attempts to make us hate the corporations and sympathize with the African victims.
A strong movie which will no doubt receive a lot of accolades and might be well remembered in the awards season.
Posted by TheCasualCritic on October 15, 2005 10:53 AM