Review of The Constant Gardener (2005) by Markb. — 09 Sep 2005

Last year's compelling and engrossing (if overextended and overlong) documentary feature The Corporation boiled down the most common characteristics of most global corporations; then, as if the firms were human beings, subjected them to a battery of psychological tests.

The result was that the typical corporation displayed a profoundly psychopathic personality--completely devoid of any sense of ethics, decency, morality or anything else that could possibly (if only slightly) get in the way of record profits and huge bottom lines.

Well, if that film was the dictionary definition of a global superfirm, The Constant Gardener could very aptly serve as Figure 1-A. Fernando Meirelles' film of John leCarre's novel is an indictment of the actions of major drug concerns in testing an iffy tuberculosis medicine in Africa without consideration of moral or legal boundaries on any level; you know where the film's going early on when a character wisecracks that drug companies, even though in the business of healing, never do anything strictly out of the goodness of their hearts.

The director received great acclaim (and an Oscar nomination) a couple years ago with the impressive but somewhat overrated City of God; the jigsaw-puzzle structuring, busy pictorial sense and jumpy MTV framing and editing style that distracted me rather than drawing me into the drama there is better suited for this movie's thriller material, and the distancing it provides is rather a blessing; knowing that the film involves using innocent people as guinea pigs, perhaps an approach that simmers rather than boils prevents a movie with this subject matter from being utterly unwatchable.

You will, however, care very deeply about the two central adults involved in the mystery: Raph Fiennes has never been more engagingly wonky than he is in the role of the perhaps-too-diplomatic Justin, and the talented, underrated Rachel Weisz, again displaying the singular skill at completely concealing the author's secrets that she did in three 2003 films (Confidence, The Shape of Things and Runaway Jury), is wonderfully alive and sympathetic as Fiennes' radical and highly unlikely spouse.

Jeffrey Caine's script adheres a little too firmly to certain well-worn thriller conventions near the end (a car chase that seems inorganic, the villain exposing his scheme to the hero in great detail), and unlike its current spiritual opposite, the compact and commercially apolitical suspenser Red Eye, this could've comfortably divested itself of about ten or fifteen minutes.

But limitations and all, The Constant Gardener is still a worthy, provocative kickoff to the movies' annual Serious Season and an effective debate starter...although for me, the most thought-provoking image was a closeup near the end of a Bible being used for distinctly unscriptural ends.

That shot (almost, but not quite a throwaway) and everything leading up to it, reminded me that, even though I know most Christians to be wonderful, decent, loving people, I probably will never "get" the Religious Right.