More Movies [catching up] The Constant Gardener

Belated notes on movies "She" and I have seen recently.

The Constant Gardener

When you read or view a thriller you are (temporarily, I hope) entering a world of paranoid delusion. Enemies abound, conspiracies flourish, you and those you love are targets and danger might lurk anywhere, behind casual handshake or a lover’s smile. All you know is that vast and terrible forces are aligned against you.

The Constant Gardener, by Fernando Meirelles, based on a novel by David Cornwell [John LeCarre] is just such a fantasy. Its premise invokes a supposed conspiracy among Western governments and international drug companies to carry out lethal experiments of new drug lines on African peasants under the guise of international aid. This provides the nearly omnipotent adversary necessary to the genre, but as a premise it is so absurd and economically implausible, so fraught with political liabilities, that I found it hard to suspend my disbelief. That did not seem to be a problem for most of the critical community which leans far to the left and finds in such fantasies confirmation of their own anti-capitalist biases, but it almost ruined the film experience for me.

Still I made an effort, figuring that if I can enjoy an ennobling fantasy about elves and dwarves and wizards and orcs I can surely stand to immerse myself in the debasing, hate-filled world of left-wing paranoia for a couple of hours. In a way I’m glad I did.

Gardener is a skillfully-wrought production. The acting throughout is excellent – not a weak performance anywhere. The cinematography is brilliant, especially the on-location shoots in Africa that are gorgeously evocative even when illustrating the depths of deprivation. The narrative is structurally complex, but easy to follow. Skillful editing draws the viewer back and forth through time to gradually reveal the complexity and depth of the major characters and their relations one to another. And it is the relationships that ultimately matter. This, far more than most thrillers, depends on our deep understanding of fully-realized characters for its effects.

Ralph Feinnes is the constant gardener, a mid-level functionary in the British foreign service who, to compensate for his meaningless bureaucratic existence, buries himself almost obsessively in gardening activities. Joy and love come into his bleak life in the form of Rachael Weisz, an incredibly annoying, but good-looking lefty student who somewhat improbably tumbles into bed with him shortly after their first meeting and then attaches herself to him. She then pushes him to take her to Africa with him on his next assignment. We are, of course, suspicious of her motives, especially when he agrees to marry her and, once in Africa, she throws herself into radical political agitation that takes her away from him for long stretches of time. On one of these forays she and her equally good-looking black colleague [played by Hubert Kounde] are brutally tortured and murdered. At about the same time, Feinnes discovers evidence that suggest that she and her colleague were, in fact, lovers. I’m not giving away the plot here – all of this is revealed early in the movie. The bulk of the film is devoted to Feinnes’ attempts to find out exactly what happened to his wife and why and what he discovers in the process. I will not go into details of the plot except to say that over time as the gardener digs deeper and deeper into the corrupt milieu of international corporate/government relations he gradually becomes aware of the nature and dimensions of the conspiracy to which he and his colleagues have either innocently or wittingly been accessories and as he learns more he becomes more and more imperiled.

The Constant Gardener, in short, is a thriller that follows the conventions of the genre, but it is also an exceptionally well-made one. Its only flaw, which many viewers consider a strength, is its political perspective. I would recommend it highly as an example of movie-making art at its best. As political commentary, though, it is naive, often silly, and insultingly so.