Subtle hints add intrigue to 'Gardener'
By Chris Hewitt

 It feels good when other people treat you as if you’re smart, and the same holds true of movies: The Constant Gardener is a political drama that assumes you’ll be able to keep up.

Here’s a tiny example of that: In an early scene, set in a hospital where Rachel Weisz is about to give birth, Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite can be seen in the background. If you don’t notice him (or don’t know who he is), it won’t damage your understanding of the film, but if you do notice him, it deepens your appreciation of The Constant Gardener, because Postlethwaite doesn’t show up again or speak a line of dialogue until the movie is 105 minutes old.

So the effect of that brief, early appearance is to make us wonder about Postlethwaite for nearly two hours. It’s a brilliant technique, because the actor and his character haunt the movie, exerting an emotional pull disproportionate to Postlethwaite’s brief screen time.

That’s just one of the smart things director Fernando Meirelles (an Oscar nominee himself for his Brazilian City of God) does in The Constant Gardener, which begins with Weisz’s death and then flashes back and forward as Justin, her remote diplomat husband (Ralph Fiennes) tries to figure out why. Was she killed because she was careless (there are hints she might have had affairs) or because she knew too much about the goings-on in Kenya, where they live?

Based on John LeCarre’s novel, The Constant Gardener looks back to ’70s thrillers in that it thinks the world is controlled by a shadow government of wealthy men who can make a deal or have an enemy killed with one phone call. Weisz’s character also believed in that world, but Justin, who puts the "dip" in "diplomat," busies himself in his garden and convinces himself that fairness always wins. Then his wife dies, and as he investigates, he begins to open his eyes.

Meirelles’ film doesn’t feel much like a LeCarre novel - it’s brasher and more disjointed than LeCarre’s elegant writing is - but it captures the writer’s moral outrage.

The Constant Gardener shows the Fiennes character shifting. Skittish and withdrawn at the beginning of the film, Fiennes saves his strongest emotions for his final scenes, when Meirelles pulls back to show us that even Africa is one place that appears to be two places.

Yes, it is devastated by disease, poverty and harsh weather, but you can’t see any of that when the camera soars over its deserts and savannahs. From that vantage point, all we can see is beauty.

Film review

‘The Constant Gardener’

HHH1/2

R (partial nudity, strong language and violence). 130 min. Regal, South Park.

 

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