The Constant Gardener
A man and a woman meet at a political briefing. The male is a polite speaker for England’s foreign policy in Kenya; the female, a fiery liberal critic who harangues him from the audience. They have a heated exchange, in which he softly takes her vehement criticisms with a kindly indulgence. They fall in love immediately after. So begins the love story that supports and directs the action of The Constant Gardener, a love story of intrigue and conspiracy.
Ralph Fiennes plays Justin Quayle, a man known for his “courteousness, self-effacement, and largeness of heart.” Rachel Weisz plays Tessa Quayle, Justin’s wife, who quickly marries him and accompanies him to Kenya, where she just as quickly abandons him to mire herself in a dangerous pharmaceutical conspiracy. She eventually is killed and when sorting through her things, Justin discovers the extent of her secret life. What at first seemed like an extramarital affair turns out to be a fight to bring down the cruel exploitation of innocent Kenyans by a profit hungry drug corporation. After Justin sees the photo of Arnold (Hubert Kounde), the doctor who it seems Tessa is having an affair with, posing with his boyfriend, Justin begins to perceive that things might not be as they appear, and starts “digging under rocks in foreign gardens.” Thus begins the intrigue.
Justin’s gardening is a metaphor for his desire to leave worldly affairs in other hands. He initially prefers to tend to his own life, but after Tessa’s death, he follows her trail to discover why she was killed and to finish what she started. Because the memory of Tessa motivates Justin, the movie contains several flashbacks to their time together. This creates good pacing, but the major problem is that their love story is irritating.
The acting deserves a B. There are some above adequate performances, but a good deal of the acting suffers from the direction. I’m referring to the brief courtship of Tessa and Justin specifically, which deserves an F. A movie that depends so much upon the love story should have put more effort into making it believable. There’s no content to it, and the cinematic manipulations are blatantly apparent, not to mention cliché. We see them go for a walk, the music is light and playful, they have nervous exchanges, emphasized by the shaky camera work, and then somehow they are so comfortable with each other they make open, playful and passionate love, with no dearth of giggles. Justin even thanks her for it. The only love Fernando Meirelles seems able to create is in the bed.
To compensate for the lack of believable love between the two, Ham (Richard McCabe), Tessa’s cousin, has to tell Justin that she truly loved him. But, as the ol’ adage goes: action speaks louder than words. Moreover, the movie seems at pains to justify Tessa’s character. When the news of her death is broadcasted on TV, we find out that she was 24. Yet, in her letter to Ham, she warns him that if he discloses any of the information, she will push him into the Tiber as she did when they were 16. Ham looks nowhere near 24, and so the revision is glaring. Tessa is the weakest link, and unfortunately, no matter how hard any one tries to fix the flaws of her creation they, and thus the movie, are doomed.
I say unfortunate because the movie has merits. The shaky handheld camera work captures the feel of discovery. The viewer gets a strong sense of being in Kenya, trying to grasp the tumult of foreign life. The camera work is even more effective when Justin submerges himself in the dark world of intrigue. Objects flit in and out of the screen like so many potential clues to the menacing reality just beyond his reach.
The character of Dr. Lorbeer (Pete Postlethwaite) is built up like a Captain Kurtz, and he doesn’t disappoint. He has some great lines; the overall dialogue is quite good. The metaphor of gardening is effective too. Still, the movie fails, since like all movies it requires the viewer to identify with its protagonist, whose love for Tessa is impossible to share. It’s a sad fact that to endure the film I had to create my own narrative: Justin must finish Tessa’s work to let her ghost rest and thereby save me from her recurring presence. Indeed, the further away the film gets from their love story the better it becomes.
I give the movie a C- overall. As for the DVD’s special features, there’s nothing of much value in them, besides the full version of the Kenyan play we get a glimpse of in the film. However, it has its limits. While the production is interesting in its tripling of characters, it’s a health play, the kind we can see in high school gyms. Just because a film is shot in an exotic locale doesn’t mean it is original, especially when its materials are threadbare.
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