Movie Type: Political Thriller, Psychological Drama
Themes: Murder Investigations, Conspiracies, Death of a Partner
Main Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy, Pete Postlethwaite
Release Year: 2005
Country: UK
Run Time: 128 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A man discovers a deadly secret when he tries to find out who killed the woman he loves in this suspense drama based on a novel by John Le Carré. Justin Quale (Ralph Fiennes) is a low-level British diplomat who has been given a new assignment in Kenya. Justin's wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), is an activist with a keen interest in issues of poverty and social justice; Justin urges her to avoid getting too deeply involved in the people living in Kenya, who are constantly dogged by poverty, but she shows little interest in obeying these instructions. This isn't the only area where Tessa has disregarded her husband, who suspects that she may have had an affair - for she started spending time with a handsome doctor once they settled in Kenya. One day, Tessa disappears, and is found brutally murdered; officials believe that she was murdered by the doctor after some sort of argument. However, before long Justin becomes convinced that there was a larger scheme that led to Tessa's death, and he begins digging into areas where he's not especially welcome, given his reputation as a man willing to let the wealthy and powerful do as they will. The Constant Gardener was the first English-speaking feature from Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles, who directed the international success City of God. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Director Fernando Meirelles made an international splash with the brilliantly gritty and stylish City of God, and he brings a surprising amount of the same vibrant energy and political consciousness to his English-language debut, The Constant Gardener. The film starts out comparatively sedate, with Justin (Ralph Fiennes) reacting with ineffectual calm to his wife's death, even consoling his friend Sandy (Danny Huston) when he gets distressed while identifying the body. Appropriately, the film comes alive in the flashbacks to Tessa's (Rachel Weisz) life, and as she traverses the teeming city of Nairobi, the screen pulsates with color and the energy of cinematographer César Charlone's (returning from City of God) street-level handheld camera work. Fiennes delivers a perfectly modulated performance. Justin is a passive, ineffectual minor diplomat who marries a beautiful younger woman he doesn't really know. "You could learn me," she tells him, and over the course of the film, it becomes clear that Justin is more concerned with understanding his murdered wife than with avenging her death. This may frustrate audiences accustomed to catharsis, but it's the only way to treat the material truthfully. The plot is similarly complex and mature, and requires concentration, but the tragic romance at the core of the film keeps viewers emotionally involved. Meirelles and screenwriter Jeffrey Caine, adapting John Le Carré's novel, approach it with searing honesty as Justin uncovers, right under his nose, a distressingly convincing corrupt world where everyone is guilty and no one is responsible. The Constant Gardener offers a superb, thoughtful, and finally heart-wrenching example of the conflation of the personal and the political. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
The film is a love story set against a conspiracy of power and dirty deeds. In London Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) meets and falls in love with outspoken humanitarian Tessa (Rachel Weisz) a beautiful young activist who persuades him to take her back with him to Africa.
Quayle, a shy low-rung British diplomat and horticultural hobbyist posted in Kenya, is one to avoid making a fuss until he learns that his wife was found dead on the veldt. Tessa has been murdered at a crossroads along with her African driver. Her colleague doctor Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Koundé) is initially suspected of her murder but is later found to have also been murdered on the same day as Tessa. Various rumours abound that the two were having an affair; however, it is later revealed that Bluhm is in fact homosexual.
As the mystery surrounding his wife's death unfolds, Quayle is radicalised in his determination to get to the bottom of his wife's murder. He is soon running up against a drug corporation using Africa's population for fraudulent testing of a drug with known harmful side effects, and demonstrating disregard for the well-being of its poor African test subjects.
Reviews have generally been very positive,[1] with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calling it "one of the year's best films."[2] However, Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice criticized the movie as "a cannonballing mélange of hack-cuts, impressionistic close-ups, and tropical swelter."[3] Ty Burr of the Boston Globe said the movie diminishes "the real urgency of the West's humanitarian disconnect from Africa. If it sends audiences home to log on to the Amnesty International website, terrific -- but that still doesn't make it a very good movie."[4] On the movie aggregator website, Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a "fresh" 84% rating from regular critics, and a "fresh" 91% from top critics.[5]
Awards
The film was nominated for the 2005 Golden Globe Awards in the following categories: Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Director and Best Performance By An Actress In A Supporting Role (Rachel Weisz).
Weisz won the award for Best Performance By An Actress In A Supporting Role at the 2005 Golden Globes for her performance in the film, as well as the 2005 Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, and Best Supporting Actress for Weisz, which she won. In their home country, it had the indications for BAFTA 2006, with 10 indications, including Best Film and Best Director, the biggest number of indications between all the competitors, but it won only one prize, Best Editing for Claire Simpson.
