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The Constant Gardener Director: Fernando Meirelles Rated: M Now screening 
Fernando Meirelles, of 'City Of God' acclaim, nobly attempts to blend
love and politics in his new feature 'The Constant Gardener'. Patronising
the love are temperate diplomat Justin (Ralph Fiennes) and politically
less-mature activist Tessa (Rachael Weisz). The married two are living
and working in Kenya in their respective, politically diametric roles;
Justin maintaining a mild presence at the British High Commission
and Tessa working amongst the poor with her medical associate Arnold
(Hubert Kounde). When Tessa is found murdered and her companion missing,
circumstances appear at first merely conventional and unfortunate,
but Justin, in a vain attempt to investigate what he suspects is unfaithfulness
on Tessa's part, inadvertently discovers and envelops himself in a
conspiracy that dwarfs his comparatively petty concerns. The management of the love theme is deft. Justin, a wonderfully emasculate Fiennes is a thoroughly sympathetic fellow, as opposed to Tessa who, initially, comes across as rather juvenile and dishonest. Justin passively accepts her apparent flaws, until he gradually realises that her virtue brings him into a state of adoration as genuine and passionate than any whilst she was alive. His acutely fluctuating pattern of feeling for Tessa is generated and sustained in similar form in the viewer through evidently masterful control of story and sentiment. Problems arise, however, as the film's politics emerge. We are presented with two forces who by reputation, rather than fact, seem fundamentally opposed: Africa with its constantly suffering inhabitants, and foreign profit-seeking pharmaceutical corporations. Add to the latter a touch of governmental corruption and we have a substantial and topical but rather simple equation for ideological conflict, and there are no prizes for guessing which party comes out looking the nastier. Far from providing a palette of original critical or subversive discourse, what is served is overdone but banal rhetoric. Meirelles competently interweaves the well-worked love and the unfortunate politics to the extent that they become almost indistinguishable, and produces a film which is both deep in its affect and farcical in its logic. For the viewer this means a rather absurd but interesting experience of attempting to resist simplistic and persuasive messages coated in an allure of love and quality filmmaking. It is frustrating that the real value of the film lies behind wads of wish-wash and requires effort to extract, but this, of course, is a characteristic of much contemporary cinema.  |
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