“The Constant Gardener,” September 7, 2021 (2005), DVD. We both appreciated the chance to see this British film adaptation of John Le Carre’s novel about love, corruption and abuse of third world populations by corporations. It packs a lot in. Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is an unassuming British diplomat stationed in Kenya. He’s much more comfortable with plants than people and is an obsessive gardener. He meets, becomes smitten with and marries Tessa (an Oscar for Rachel Weisz), a whirlwind political activist who takes no prisoners and lives a life of complete obsession devoted to fighting for justice and against neocolonialism and corporate power. She and African colleague Arnold Blum go off to investigate what seems a conspiracy involving the British government, Kenyan officials, and big pharma using suffering impoverished Africans as testing guinea pigs. Tessa and Arnold’s deaths force Justin to confront his life of quiet desperation without her and to examine the duplicity of his own government, the neocolonial corporate swamp. Wonderful work by Fiennes and Weisz and great supporting performances (as always) from Pete Postelthwaite as the doctor who developed the drug being tested and oversaw its tests in Africa and Bill Nighy as the leading Home Office reptile in the scheme. But the acting is stellar all round, the music is a powerful tool here, and the script for this complicated story is deftly crafted.
Filmed on location in Kenya, the movie includes considerable spontaneous interaction between the impoverished children who lived in the shantytowns Nairobi and other cities. Its direction by Brazilian Fernando Mereilles (City of God) gives it a different eye to the scheme and the characters, with music and life in the townships up close and personal. As Mereilles said in the attached features the poverty they worked in made the horrible conditions he saw in Rio’s slums pale in comparison.
LeCarre lauded the script, in part, because it did not rely on his dialogue or set scenes. Not written to facilitate filming, the novel nonetheless yields a film that draws you into both the characters – who become more real as they develop, the political and economic power and abuses by westerners and collaborators alike, and the question of love itself. A very good film. I look forward to discussing it, along with the book, in a book group session later this month. We’re looking at both books and the movies they generated.