The Constant Gardener Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)August 28th, 2005
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
As he did in his wildly overrated CITY OF GOD (CIDADE DE DEUS), OSCAR nominee Fernando Meirelles once again creates a film that is a triumph of style over storytelling. This film version of John Le Carré's THE CONSTANT GARDENER fashions a simplistic world in which the United Nations is the source of all good while big businesses and governments are the source of all evil. (Before you go protesting the evil as shown in the film, you might want to check the reality of the situation, which is massive aid from both the United States and the British government into Africa in order to aggressively attack the AIDS epidemic there and big pharmaceutical firms providing their AIDS drugs below cost.)
Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is a wimpy British government administrator who falls head over heels in love with Tessa (Rachel Weisz) in their first encounter. He is delivering a dull lecture, which she upsets with a long diatribe against the war in Iraq and in favor of the U.N. She is an outspoken liberal activist who never backs down in the face of danger.
Although Weisz delivers yet another in a long series of strong performances, Fiennes is almost laughably bad. The character he creates has few believable moments.
The story, which lumbers along, cutting back and forth, never really tells us what positions Justin or Tessa hold or exactly what they really do for a living. Suffice it to say that he works for the big bad British government, who, in collusion with the drug companies, are killing Africans as they use the Africans as human genuine pigs. She, on the other hand, is trying to expose this exploitation and murder. None of this is believable for a minute. But, even if it were, the movie never really cares about the story, as it is too busy trying to score style points with some spectacular cinematography and dramatic images.
The movie, which is about a half hour longer that it needs to be, does make one suspect that there is a decent movie that could be made from this John Le Carré novel, but this version by Meirelles isn't it.
If you want to see more effective adaptations of John Le Carré novels, John Boorman's THE TAILOR OF PANAMA from 2001 is the most recent. Although many will probably point you to THE LOOKING GLASS WAR and THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, both from the 1960s, as perhaps the best examples of Le Carré adaptations, for my money none is better than "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People," two television miniseries from the late 1970s and early 1980s.
THE CONSTANT GARDENER runs way too long at 2:09. It is rated R for "language, some violent images and sexual content/nudity" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Wednesday, August 31, 2005. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
