Constant Gardener: Movie Review
A murder mystery combines beautifully with a love story in what is one of the best movies of this season. In “The Constant Gardener” Fernando Meirelles takes us through an epic journey that spans Europe and Africa in a haunting depiction of the sordid reality behind the practices of some of today’s pharmaceutical giants, and the profound power of love even beyond death.
The movie begins as murder mysteries often do, with the gruesome murder of one of the principal characters, Tessa Quayle, the flawed heroine, played to perfection by Rachel Weisz. Her husband, Justin(Ralph Fiennes) takes the news with stoic calm, but it changes him fundamentally from a mild-mannered, ineffectual diplomat content with gardening, into a force to reckon with that will know no rest till the reasons behind Tessa’s death and the rumors around her life are not explained.
The story unfolds in disconnected flashbacks, between the memories Justin has of his passionate, unconventional and idealistic wife, and his subsequent efforts to investigate her tragic death. The more of her he remembers, the more he is able to relate with the facts he discovers, and as a consequence falls more profoundly in love with the person she was, in an ironical fulfillment of her assurance “You will learn me”, during their whirlwind courtship.
He grapples with the truth behind the rumors surrounding her, and presses right along into more and more dangerous terrain, as the corrupt, greedy, ruthless machine behind the workings of the “pharma” giant tries to stop him, permanently. It is a diabolical conspiracy, a complex web, where no one is sure of the entire truth behind the façade of philanthropy, where the pharmaceutical companies distribute AIDS drugs and possibly use it to mask illegal trials of other drugs, and members of the government collude with them. In Justin’s journey spanning two continents and three countries, the familiar becomes threatening, and the unknown even more so.
Meirelles does a masterly rendering of Le Carre’s original, turning the textual into the visual, and presenting us with a story that is organic to its surroundings. His technique is subtle and impressionistic, and the vivid pace he builds up with the use of excellent cinematography (by Cesar Charlone) is nothing short of brilliant. He adapts a layered, overexposed, or documentary style as the occasion demands and the contrasts between the vibrant colors, the laughter in the face of ravaging poverty and misery in Kenya and the cold, almost sterile portrayal of Europe, add to the movie’s undeniable appeal. He brings together the various threads in the story seamlessly, and manages to extract stellar performances from both Weisz and Fiennes.
Weisz has had her share of mummies, and looks ready to take on bigger challenges. In this movie, her volatile, vibrant, idealistic Tessa who seduces Justin into marriage and subsequent trip to Africa is entirely credible. Her membership in groups like Women for Life and her ways that invite disapproval from her husband’s colleagues, her apparent naivete and tendency to show off by going to a local hospital in Kenya, and her compassion for the downtrodden look very real. Tessa’s interactions with her husband are shimmering. Weisz leaves us in no doubt as to her powers as an actress and her ability to deliver roles with candor and intensity.
Since Schindler’s List, Fiennes has almost always been an actor of merit, and he proves it beyond doubt in this movie. The portrayal of grief, of the transformation of a quiet man who stays out of trouble to a determined man actually looking for some, is done with assured maturity, and the retiring gardener becomes a man on a mission with seamless ease. You fall in love with his eyes and his smile, which move you in exactly the right way at the right moments. Here is an actor to reckon with, and he does a fine job indeed of carrying the movie through.
The supporting cast does a good job as well, though each looks typical to the role. Tessa’s colleague, Arnold Bluhm(Hubert Kounde), , Sandy Woodrow (Danny Houston), the slippery British High Commissioner and Justin’s immoral boss, Sir Bernard Pellegrin (Bill Nighy) all come across a little too true to their categories, lacking the subtlety and dimension of Le Carre’s originals.
Though it encompasses a lot of sadness and horror, The Constant Gardener remains a movie with a message that does not hit you over the head, but instead seeps in a little at a time. It moves you and makes you think. Most of all, it sketches out the lives of two people whose love evolves through their circumstances, and ultimately transcends the ephemeral. It is a saga that enraptures as much as it horrifies, and is definitely one of those to watch out for at the next year’s Oscars.
Author: Facts Jokes N Fun
