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A widower is determined to get to the bottom of a potentially explosive secret involving his wife's murder, big business, and corporate corruption.
Ralph Fiennes: Justin Quayle
Rachel Weisz: Tessa Quayle
Powerful, emotional, political; The Constant Gardner is an adaptation of astounding resonance of John le Carre's novel and behind the film Jeffrey Caine's screenplay and City of God Director Fernando Meirelles.
The story and journey of one man trying desperately to find an answer to the loss of his love; His wife. In truth, a nightmare and a love story that sadly entwines but you still feel through flashbacks, the resonance of something that can never be extinguished.
The performances and acting from its two lead roles Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes simply are incredible and wondrous to witness.
Ralph's performance and portrayal as Justin is top standards while Weisz as Tessa shines like she did in The Fountain and shows a performance worthy of the Oscar she plucked from her emotionally charged portrayal told sadly but effectively in past tense.
The romantic portion of the film was immortalized by the two characters Justin and Tessa(Ralph & Rachel). Their first meeting was dynamically presented as Tessa; a social activist verbally toying with Justin as he makes a political speech. When the hall was cleared, however, it was Justin who was actually comforting Tessa after her outburst. The juxtaposition of the placid, passive Justin versus the fervent, hyper-kinetic Tessa was brilliantly established in this scene alone.
The strands of thriller and social realism are inextricably tied together in the film. As a film noir detective piece; The Constant Gardener seeks to uncover what actually happened to Justin and Tessa on their African journey. At the same time, the main culprit that emerges is the heavy hand of greed as the pharmaceutical companies exploit helpless victims of tuberculosis for the purpose of testing and marketing an experimental drug. At one point in the film, it is disclosed to Justin that the pharmaceutical industry is no different than arms dealers.
This film truly rewards its audience as it works on so many levels. Like Crash you won't be able to stop pondering over every thing you've just seen. The politics here are engaging and bound to stir up even the most complacent viewer. What's even more amazing is that all of the timely political discourse and subsequent thriller aspects of the film,courtesy of the source material, John Le Carre's novel, are wrapped up in an immortal romance. We the audience join Fiennes on his journey across Africa, and we rediscover the love story between he and his wife that ties the film in a poetic realism usually reserved for movies with much less on their minds.
To top it off, it's all delivered in the maddeningly genius Meirelles style that took critics and audiences by storm in his debut masterpiece City of God. We have the shaky hand-held camera darting through vibrant and colorful third-world locales juxtaposed with jaw-droppingly gorgeous aerial photography of Africa in all its glory. Meirelles again shows us he is a true artist and visionary willing to show both the shocking beauty and abject horror of the people and places that populate his films. Again he delivers a message that people are doing horrible things to each other, everywhere.
With City of God he seemed to be saying the only hope is to document and record it. The Constant Gardener makes that argument again and takes it one brilliant step forward. We may not be able to stop a war or a huge global injustice, but we do have the power to help one person at a time. It takes a courageous film to make such a statement, and a brilliant film-maker to deliver it, and that's just what The Constant Gardener achieves.
Fine performances that reside in Constant Gardner not only come from it's two leads but come from Bill Nighy who manages not to be funny, Danny Houston who's in loads of good films recently, and Hubert Kounde who proves it's the quiet ones you got to watch.
The Constant Gardner often hurts to watch, performances yes it's five stars, but I think it's a movie that has so many levels of expressing the tragedy and materialism of human beings. The rarity being those two people; Firstly Tessa then later as he reveals the truth Justin standing against corruption. The catalyst being greed and the ultimate cure and salvation being love.
Losing a loved one is a very hard thing for anyone and to watch another man go through that pain, hurts beyond mere words.
The hopelessness, the injustice and that sometimes your enemy, the ones you were fighting are right back at home. In this regard The Constant Gardener is significantly masterful in it's wisdom and the message hits home with a bitter aftertaste and an emotional assault on our feeling and our fears.
10/10
