The Constant Gardener | Review

Web of conspiracies-a-plenty in political thriller.

Trading the slums of Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro for another third-world epidemic, from the filmmaker who gave us the brilliant City of God, we get another example of hell on earth – this time with the AIDS-stricken nations of the African continent as the apocalyptic setting. Usually the results are not promising in the transition that sees a talented foreign filmmaker who finds success on the international scene with one home grown film and then subsequently follows that up with an American production feature. While it would be a surprise to find the picture among many top tens lists at year’s end, director Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener manages to become a poignant observation of an individual’s responsibility and accountability in the bigger scope of things – and this works efficiently despite working within the constraints of the thriller genre.

Based on John le Carre’s novel (who also wrote The Tailor of Panama), there are many items that figure in the film’s narrative agenda – thankfully Jeffrey Caine’s screenplay makes for a two hours that is more accentuated in discovering facts from truths and lies, than far-fetched car chases and fancy gun play. While the second half of the film deals more in the thriller elements with a widowed former-horticulture enthusiast hunting down anyone who was involved, the first half, told mostly in flashback mode, tells the story about the person who dies in a horrible car-crash which is far from being called an accident. The outer core of the film addresses how people get hurt when billions of dollars are at stake and when sensitive information may be harmed by bad publicity. The interior purpose of the film sees the corrupt nature of how foreign European government officials conspire with the multinational companies – in this case the pharmaceutical industry who use actual humans as guinea pigs for research and development projects.

Without being exploitative as most American film productions do when set in foreign poorer lands often do, there is a sensitivity to be found in the filmmaker’s approach. Unlike most films that use African nations as a mere decorative backdrop – here Meirelles’ interest is in capturing something that is furthest away from a world of fiction. There is an authenticity in the docu-imagery that is used – not because of a sequence that shows Weisz’s character interacting amongst children but with guerilla styled shots that show non-professional actors who don’t need to read headlines as to knowing what it is to suffer. With the same grainy, filtered look seen in 21 Grams, a sequence like the inside a morgue is naturalistic in the manner that it would lead to a loss of appetite. Though the film uses filters and a conscious handheld look it doesn’t shy away from showing the people – basically there are not too may second unit shots to be found here.

Again the presence of cinematography Cesar Charlone is the hidden joker to Meirelles deck, making The Constant Gardener the interesting watch perhaps more for its political commentary and its narrative strategy that refreshingly keeps romanticism to a “bump” on the stomach and very little on-screen chagrin. The overall make-up of the film finds an interesting combination of the love story within the existing practices recently examined in such docs as The Corporation and Darwin’s Nightmare – basically we are looking at a something that goes beyond Beyond Borders.

Rating 3 stars