THE CONSTANT GARDENER

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Focus Features
Grade: A-
Directed by: Fernando Meirelles
Written by: Jeffrey Caine, novel by John Le Carre
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy
Screened at: Universal, NYC, 7/12/05

If you wonder why drug companies charge so much for brand
name pharmaceuticals, consider this. The company that
discovers the drug has a patent stalling the distribution of cheap
generics. The companies moan that research costs are so high
that they need to charge an arm and a leg to make up the costs.
The companies brag that they distribute some drugs free to
countries whose citizens could not otherwise afford the
medicine. The truths, according to those who take the time to
research corporate greed and pharmaceutical companies' profit-
grabs (like John Le Carre for example) are these. The real
expense of drug companies is in the marketing. (Have you
noticed all those ads on subway cars, buses, periodicals and
TV?) The drugs which are distributed to Africa are likely to be
outdated, spoiled. Companies alleviate their guilt and
manipulate us in the developed countries by advertising their
(impotent) giveaways. And oh, yes. Just as some doctors
specialize in plastic surgery, giving the rich some tucks here and
largely ineffective cures for baldness, the Big Pharma, as the
behemoth is called by detractors, concentrate on items like
Viagara, Levitor and Cialis and on diseases afflicting mostly
people in the wealthy West. This is not necessary a bad idea,
but hardly as important as working on medicines that can
alleviate, malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, and other ills which are
endemic in poor countries.

So what is Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles ("City of God")
up to in his expose of corporate malfeasance? Using Jeffrey
Caine's script, which Caine adapted from the great novelist of
international intrigue, John Le Carre, he patiently unfolds an
emotional drama involving both the great love of an
undistinguished, unambitious gardener in the employ of the
British High Commission in Kenya for a passionate, idealistic
activist who is his opposite in temperament–yet another
example of how opposites attract. Members of the audience for
a drama both as restrained as the gardener and as
melodramatic as the activist will take from the story that aspect
which interests them more. If you're politically-minded, you'll go
for the send-up of naked, manipulative capitalism. If you're a
fan of romances, you'll dig the passion. In either case, you're in
for a treat, because "The Constant Gardener" is exquisitely
photographed in East Africa where cinematographer Cesar
Charlone emphasizes the reds and in London (also a small
scene in Berlin), where the lensing stresses the greens.

Here's the key point: paradoxically, the areas generally known
to house the highly civilized and proper, where gentlemen
indulge themselves in exclusive clubs, on the golf courses and
in afternoon tea, are simply barbaric when juxtaposed against
the often anarchic scenes in Africa.

Most of the story takes place in rural, out-of-the-way areas of
Northern Kenya, where an activist, Tessa Quayle (Rachel
Weisz) is found murdered. When her companion, Dr. Arnold
Bluhm (Hubert Koude), flees the area, he is considered a prime
suspect, particularly by Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), her (until
then) laid-back husband. Members of the British High
Commission Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston) and Bernard
Pellegrin (Bill Nighy) want the grieving widower to leave matters
to then, but the murder is a turning point in the life of the gentle
man who'd as soon tend his garden at home as risk his life to
discover the truth. Justin dedicates himself to a search for
answers in Kenya, in London and in Berlin, where in peeling the
onion he becomes privy to a conspiracy–one involving a major
pharmaceutical company's testing a drug promoted to be a
miracle cure, but whose side effect on no small number of
Africans is death. The mistakes are buried, and those who work
to uncover the duplicity of the company are beaten up,
threatened, in at least one case hanged upside down and
tortured and killed.

Just as novelist Le Carre regularly flashes forward and
backward to make his points in the more dramatic and
suspenseful manner, director Meirelles gets us involved in
Justin and Tessa's passionate romance by passing through
Tessa's murder in an opening segment, then avoiding a linear
narrative. We in the audience slowly acquire clues that allow us
to put the pieces together. Given one tense scene in which a
group of bandits approach a village on horseback as though
partaking of a Moroccan fantasia–stealing cattle, burning huts
and kidnaping children–it's a wonder that the government of
Kenya permitted the filming. The poverty is startling, the scenes
of one particular slum in Nairobi making some of Rio's favelas
(filmed as well by this director) look like Hiltons. The Kenyan
children are uniformly friendly to white visitors, running after
them (albeit principally for money) and shouting "how are you,
how are you," the only words they know in English.

In any work of cinema or literature, a principal character
changes during the course of the story, in this case a reversal of
timidity both stunning and credible as the peaceful gardener
turns into a fiery activist determined to track down his wife's
murderer while uncovering major crimes of Big Pharma. The
chemistry between Fiennes and Weisz is palpable: we accept
the merging of people with diametrically opposite
temperaments, Weisz in the role of a woman who needs an
anchor and Fiennes as an unduly civilized and trusting Brit.
"The Constant Gardener" is a major find, the year's most
trenchant look into an industry which on the surface has led to
impressive treatments for disease but on its dark underside
experiments with deadly drugs on Third World people
considered just so many lab rats.

Rated R. 130 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com