The Constant Gardener

‘Constant Gardener’ is a film adaptation of a novel by John Le Carre. Outspoken human rights activist Tessa Quaile (Rachel Weisz), the wife of a lower rank British diplomat, is murdered in North Kenya.

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According to the official version, the woman was the victim of a crime of passion: killed by her alleged lover. Justin, her listless husband (Ralph Fiennes), seems resigned until he discovers some worrying clues among Tessa’s belongings. Animated by his love for Tessa, Justin takes interest in her cause and begins a private investigation which leads him to discover some global scale conspiracies involving governments and pharmaceutical companies, conspiracies which his late wife was struggling to debunk. Formerly a quiet paper-pusher who spent his leisurely hours in his garden, Justin undergoes phenomenal character transformations and jumps into the fray. The rest is action and thrill.

Ralph Fiennes’ starchy manner cannot make for an outstanding performance, but for what it’s worth, it serves him well in this role. Rachel Weisz, on the other hand, is in her element as the exuberant young woman and courageous social worker (the American Film Academy was of a similar opinion, awarding her the Oscar for for best supporting actress). Brazilian director Fernando Mirelles, whose ‘City of God’ had drawn an Oscar nomination, doesn’t bring too much variation to the recipe that earned him accolades. The pace is fast, the editing brisk, the cinematography whimsical. Perhaps that’s a suitable style for socially and politically charged dramas: it helps convey a sense of emergency, gravity even, without falling into an easy sort of ruefulness. The extras of the Focus Features DVD allow a glimpse into the making of the movie: ‘Constant Gardener’ was filmed on location, the slums were the actual peripheries of Nairobi, and the desolate people roaming them are the actual locals. The film-makers are proud to point out that the scene where Rachel Weisz wanders through the slums greeted by children is authentic. The community, we learn, has been very supportive of the project. Clips with cast members talking about their touching experience almost win us over, but book author John Le Carre disenchants us with an inadvertently cynical giveaway: he had made up his mind to write a victimizing book about Africa, and since the oil topic was too much ‘on the nose’, he went for the pharmaceutical industry. It is a well-known fact that Le Carre is involved with charities and we needn’t doubt his sincerity. Yet his interview showed a bit too much excitement with Africa as material for cathartic action movies. ‘We have controversy, we have a [story] about the pharmaceutical industry, but above all we have a movie: we have wonderful entertainment’, Le Carre says. The problem is, entertainment defeats the efforts of making a realistic movie. Fictionalized tragedy is mere fiction, it is entertainment above all, often to the point of disrespecting its subject matter.