The Constant Gardener - R
Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the movie begins with an abrupt, violent car crash scene resulting in two deaths. The film features complex betrayals (personal, corporate, and political) that will be difficult for younger viewers to follow. It also includes images of impoverished and ailing individuals in Kenyan villages and hospitals, violence (men on horseback chase after villagers), chase scenes, and brief sexuality (a soft-filtered, loving scene with the couple nestled in white sheets). Some language (uttered in anger), and much discussion of disloyalty, lies, and greed on the part of British government officials and international drug corporations.
Families who see this movie might discuss love and betrayal and how the movie begs questions of individual, institutional and political trust. How does the film use "Africa" as an idea as much as a location? How does the film indict bureaucracies and champion individual acts?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
THE CONSTANT GARDENER is often lovely, sometimes harrowing, and always perceptive. It begins with a violent car crash, the camera flipping over and over, the shots too close to show who's involved or how the accident happens. Minutes later, word gets back to Justin (Fiennes) that his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) has been killed in the wreck. After a moment, the painfully proper Justin thanks the fellow who delivers the news.
Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' film traces Justin's shift from trusting, go-along bureaucrat to skeptical, resolute, and increasingly fervent investigator. Justin learns that Tessa's death was the result of her own investigation, into the collusions of international drug corporations and first world governments to use African populations as guinea pigs. While this part of the plot is rooted in the film's source, John le Carré's 2001 novel, it doesn't lead to the usual action-packing. Indeed, Justin is more melancholic than heroic, and The Constant Gardener is more meditative than thrilling. Instead, the film focuses on his emotional and political awakening (shown in flashbacks) and his changing responses to Tessa's death.
When Justin travels to Kenya, where Tessa was working with a doctor, Arnold (Hubert Koundé), the movie takes off visually. It contrasts the interiors of urban, well-heeled London with Africa's vast landscapes and poverty, at once breathtaking and oppressive. Meirelles and his City of God cinematographer César Charlone keep the visual frame a little frantic, staying close in on faces, following and anticipating movement, intimating both the local devastation and the personal tolls taken by Tessa and Justin's differing reactions to what they witness.
Tessa loves Justin's solidity, no matter how naïve it might be. "I feel safe with you," she tells him. His memories of her are all shimmery and lovely (except when he accuses her of betrayal, and they argue). And Justin blames himself for not keeping her "safe," making himself miserable, but also pushing him to pursue whatever "truth" he imagines exists. He tells himself he wants to continue her work, and assign proper blame to the villains, but he also wants to learn what exactly she thought was too arduous for him to bear, whether that was an affair with Arnold, or betrayals by his own supposed friends, including Sandy (Danny Huston), acting Head of the British High Commission.
In Africa, where Tessa interacts easily and affecionately with children and patients, fretful Justin keeps his distance, declaring that because their efforts would be futile against the tide of suffering. He feels they can't insert themselves in the locals' unhappy lives. Much as Tessa and Justin work as characters (thanks to subtle performances by both actors), they are troubling as bits of the larger context as they appear to be yet another set of white figures used to dramatize, and frame a black African story.
Families who like this movie should also see other thrillers featuring an individual up against government/corporate corruption, like North by Northwest (1959), Chinatown (1972) or Blow Out. You might also like Meirelles' stunning City of God, Fiennes' Oscar and Lucinda or Quiz Show, and the excellent, underseen La Haine, which stars Hubert Koundé.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentRomantic, pretty sex, some nudity (pregnant body). |
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ViolenceViolent car crash at start, violence inflicted on villagers, a woman miscarries. |
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LanguageUsed in anger or frustration. |
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Social BehaviorGovernment and corporate corruption, lies and arguments between friends. |
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CommercialismDiscussion of drugs products and patents. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoBrief smoking, drinking; drugs given to patients. |
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