The Constant Gardener
The Constant Gardener treads a fine line between being a political thriller, exposing the corruption that surrounds capitalism and victimizes the third world, and a family drama about a married couple whose differing passions drove them apart, and then together again (though too late to solve anything). It’s fascinating because it does not have neat and tidy endings. It’s like a very high stakes, global economy version of the Pelican Brief, but without the easy coincidences to drive the plot forward. It’s a conspiracy thriller but it is also a blooming flower of a man getting to know the world he lives in, including his wife, in very new and unexpected ways.
Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz are a couple living in Africa, doing their work. He is a diplomat, she is an activist, but their constrasting reactions to and dispositions toward their host nation are complementary in a yin and yang sort of way. As actors, they are both alarmingly and uniquely beautiful, and opposites in such a fashion that they click perfectly. As characters, they start with such a fiction-friendly smooth beginning and slide gently into friction and misunderstanding, and the journey feels very genuine and not at all forced or plot-driven. Weisz’ character brazenly endangers her own mission with her force of conviction, and Fiennes’ diplomat is helpless in a world where the shadows have more substance than that he sees.
The narrative is constructed almost completely in flashback, a difficult structure to maintain for long without either becoming confusing or just filler for bookends, but this movie handles it very well. I couldn’t help but step outside myself at the breathtaking, painterly camera work and interesting shots, and I actually wrote “Editing!” in my notes because of how deftly the complex story unfolded before me. It’s the artiest conspiracy theory movie in a while, taking something that could have gone the pulpy route of Enemy of the State or the overly auteurish Syriana and making it into something balanced just right.
The story pits global morality against one’s own moral compass and abilities to help other people, and portrays the overwhelming helplessness many of us feel when we see our distant neighbors suffering in a way seemingly beyond prevention. Brains and morality terrify big business, which is why you see so little of both within their ranks. A chilling quote from the movie: “[we’re] not paid to be bleeding hearts…[we’re] not killing anyone who wouldn’t die anyway.” It’s a treacherous, heart-chilling story with a terrific climax and epilogue, and I hope it gets the acknowledgement it missed at the box office.
Side note: this is the best performance of Danny Huston’s career - let’s have more of this and less Silver City.
MPAA Rating R-language, violent images, sexual content/nudity
Release date 8/31/05
Time in minutes 129
Director Fernando Meirelles
Studio Focus Features
