September 7, 2005
review of The Constant Gardener
A very fine film adaptation of a very fine book by John le Carre. Ralph Fiennes is very well cast in this role as a milquetoast diplomat Justin Quayle who finds his strength and courage as he investigates his wife's murder and undercovers the conspiracy of a big pharmaceutical company to cover up its medical malfeasance (based on some hard research on Big Pharma by le Carre). Rachel Weisz is very convincing as his trouble-making do-gooder wife Tessa (though Kate Winslet, at one point considered for the role, would have been good too). The rest of the cast is equally up to the task, especially Pete Postlewaite in a cameo as Dr. Lorbeer.
Fernando Meirelles is the director in his first big-budget feature, and he uses his big-budget well, without seeming to sell out like so many indy film-makers enticed to take their director's chair to Hollywood. I didn't see his break-through film City of God because I heard it was ultra-violent, but I may have to go back to it after seeing this film. He brought to the film something that was a little lacking in the novel, namely a developing-world sensibility. With the help of fabulous cinematography, we see both the beauty and the terrible suffering of the ever-exploited Africa. Many, many stunning shots.
And now a major pet peeve.
All summer I've been seeing ads on the internet featuring a figure in silhouette (the main character Justin Quayle) pointing a gun. Once upon a time, I would have avoided the film altogether because, on principle, I didn't see films that featured guns in their ads. But this was a John le Carre adaptation, with Ralph Fiennes, so I had to see it, despite the gun.
Now here's the thing: at no point in the film does Quayle fire a gun. In fact, in the one scene where he might have used a gun, he purposely dumps the bullet cartridge, in effect disarming it. Which makes it all the more disgustingly cynical that the ad campaign would feature said character pointing said gun. Obviously, it was meant to bring in the young, supposedly gun-happy, male demographic. Either that or it was kow-towing to the gun lobby. It disturbs me greatly that even films that have an essentially non-violent message have to pretend that they are violent to sell more tickets.
Well you can read it here: if you want your main protagonist to be a vengeful, gun-happy nut, this is not the film for you, despite what you see in the ads.
If you want your main protagonist to be brave and resourceful without resorting to violence, you might want to check it out.
And Hollywood, keep your stupid violence-pandering ad campaigns away from me and fine films like this one.
Final note: I found the film web-site to be poorly designed (despite the snazzy graphics), hard to navigate, and not very informative. Note to the web site designers: larding your site with distorted film clips, making the viewer sit through them before getting to menu options, is NOT a good idea. And making you click on a gun to get into the site is juvenile. I'll give the URL, though I don't recommend the site:
http://www.theconstantgardener.com/
Posted by jeb at September 7, 2005 10:23 PM | TrackBack