"Constant Gardener" is an adaptation of John Le Carre's 2000 novel.
Although it is flawed in many ways, it is certainly worth seeing as another
example of Hollywood idealism à la "Syriana."
Starring Ralph Fiennes as Justin Quayle, a career-minded British diplomat
who has never challenged authority in his life, and Rachel Weisz as Tessa,
his much younger and more idealistic wife, it dispenses with the sort of
moral ambiguities and contradictions of Le Carre's earlier and more
successful fiction. Set during the cold war, "The Spy Who Came in From the
Cold" basically made the case that there was not much difference between
the USA and the USSR. Since Le Carre was a career operative in the British
MI5, this was a rather daring stance, especially when considered against
the example of Ian Fleming--JFK's favorite author.
With the collapse of the USSR, Le Carre has shifted to the left and become
a vocal critic of globalization, both in his fiction and in his
journalistic efforts. As such, "Constant Gardener" is a sweeping indictment
of the worldwide drug industry. After Justin and Tessa wed, she returns to
Kenya with him where she becomes a kind of left-liberal version of Mother
Theresa. In the opening scenes of the film, she announces to him, "Take me
to Africa with you". When he asks her what she plans to do, she expresses
no clear idea. Obviously, we are dealing with a certain kind of personality
that has gravitated to NGO's. Since she is also the daughter of an Italian
countess, the almost suffocating sense of 'noblesse oblige' pervades her
character and the first third of the movie, when we see her dispensing AIDs
medication to the natives.
For his part, Justin Quayle is content to tend to the garden at his
diplomat's villa, clearly meant to evoke Candide's observation: "That's all
very well, but let us cultivate our garden." In other words, it is a
metaphor for disengagement.
After Tessa discovers that drug companies have been using the poor,
unsuspecting and Black population in a TB drug trial that often results in
death, she goes on a crusade to expose them. She is murdered for her
efforts. Le Carre's novel is mostly about Justin Quayle's attempts to
discover who killed his wife and eventually complete her mission. Although
she is present in a number of flashbacks, we encounter her more as a memory
than as a character engaged with others.
In a bid, one supposes, to make the tale more accessible to mainstream
audiences, screenwriter Jeffrey Caine makes Tessa a major character and
devotes most of the first third of the film to showing her at work in the
slums of Kenya and making love to Justin. This decision ultimately shifts
the focus away from the novel's attempt to portray Justin Quayle's
disillusionment with British "civilization," particularly in the way it
uses native peoples as guinea pigs. The film represents this much more as
an attempt to maintain his wife's place in his heart. Indeed, one never
quite gets the sense that Fienne's character has really understood what
leads corporations to murder.
In one of the key scenes of Le Carre's novel, Quayle confronts Pelligrin,
his superior in the Foreign Office, with his knowledge of the drug
companies' crimes and Pelligrin's complicity, at an elegant private club.
This scene reveals Le Carre at his best, with biting ironies at the expense
of the blueblood but degraded Pelligrin. In the film, it loses much of its
cutting edge as Le Carre's narration falls by the wayside--as it inevitably
must in any adaptation of a novel. Instead, we are left with the dialogue
which as good as it is cannot convey the full dimensions of Quayle's breach
with his class.
Since I was never impressed with Fernando Meirelles hand-held camera-work
in "City of God," I was even less impressed with its deployment once again
in "Constant Gardener." This Brazilian director seems an odd choice for a
Le Carre film since his forte, such as it is, is in depicting panoramic
depictions of urban squalor. Such jittery effects seem ill-placed here.
Although I have not read Le Carre's "Constant Gardener," I would have
chosen another approach entirely. I would have dispensed with the Tessa
back-story altogether and focused much more on the dialogue. One of the
great films of all time dealing with crime and pharmaceuticals is "The
Third Man," which is 90 percent dialogue. Since Graham Greene is obviously
a major influence on John Le Carre, it would have made sense to choose a
screenwriter and director who have been influenced by Carol Reed's
masterpiece. Of course, such people do not exist in Hollywood anymore.
Whatever the flaws of "Constant Gardener," it is well worth renting from
your local video store--especially in comparison with the garbage that is
foisted on the public on a regular basis.
--
www.marxmail.org
