The Constant Gardener
INTRODUCTION
Why Fernando Meirelles?
Fernando Meirelles’ film is one of a recent batch of Hollywood films dealing with serious issues. In this case the film is a conspiracy thriller, which looks at the involvement of a large pharmaceutical company in testing drugs in Africa. That said, the film is much more, combining a love story, a quest for revenge and expressing real anger about the West’s apparently unchecked exploitation of ordinary African people.
The Constant Gardener is an adaptation of a novel by the British writer John le Carré, best known for his tales of spies and Cold War intrigue. Fernando Meirelles seemed an odd choice for director, because of his Brazilian background and the seemingly huge difference between this film and his first feature, the explosive story of a Rio favela, City of God (2003). www.filmeducation.org 1
Mike Newell was the first choice for director, but had already committed himself to the new Harry Potter film, but Meirelles was very interested in the project. He told The Independent, ‘The chance to take on the pharmaceutical industry was one of the three elements that made me want to direct The Constant Gardener, as was the chance to shoot in Kenya. Also, it’s a very original love story about a man who marries a much younger woman who is very different from him, and it’s only after she dies that he truly falls in love with her.’
Meirelles’ Brazilian background gave him a source of empathy with the poverty in the Nairobi shantytown of Kibera, the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa where some of the film was shot. Crucially his sense of distance from the British establishment of diplomats, gentleman’s clubs and colonial attitudes gives a great deal of insight into the workings of the upper echelons of big business and government power.
The director’s visual style is also very apparent in The Constant Gardener. As seen in his first film Meirelles uses saturated colours to symbolise the differences between settings. He also favours a kinetic editing style which structures the narrative in a fragmented fashion. The camera often swoops in to areas that the audience might not expect it to go, using real life locations to give it pace and energy.
TASKS
■ This film has been called an angry film. How much of this do you feel comes from the director?
■ Do you feel that Meirelles’ own Brazilian background helped with the film?
■ Compare this film with his earlier film City of God. What thematic and stylistic links can you make?
NARRATIVE
How does the story work?
The film is largely told in a non-linear fashion. This means that it does not follow chronologically as in most films. It also moves between a number of settings, Kenya, London, Berlin and Southern Sudan, and interweaves a complex plot regarding the testing of a drug for tuberculosis called Dypraxa, high level corruption between government officials and multinational companies and the central love story between British diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) and his activist wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz).
The film takes place in the present. It starts rather uncharacteristically with the murder of one of the central characters, Tessa, who with her friend, Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Kounde) is traveling to the north of Kenya. Justin discovers this, and the plot starts to unravel in flashback. We see how he and Tessa first met in London. They are quickly cast as www.filmeducation.org 2
opposites: Justin, the quiet, mild-mannered civil servant and Tessa the fiery, dedicated political activist. Their decision to get married and to travel together to Africa, where Justin has been posted as a diplomat for the Foreign Office is also shown as is Tessa’s pregnancy and her work doing medical outreach in Kibera with Arnold.
This is intercut with Justin and his colleague Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston) identifying Tessa’s corpse and creates an interesting contrast between the past and the present in the film’s timeframe. As the narrative and further flashbacks continue, it becomes clear that there is more between Sandy and Tessa than was first thought.
Tessa miscarries, and while at the hospital she befriends a girl who she becomes convinced is being murdered. She informs Sandy about this. On her release from hospital she starts to dig deeper into links between the testing of tuberculosis medication, the British High Commission and big multinational pharmaceutical companies. She writes a damming report and gives it to Sandy who passes it to his superior Sir Bernard Pellegrin (Bill Nighy). The response in the form of a letter from Sir Bernard becomes an important narrative motif. Tessa asks Sandy if she can read it and he agrees when she offers to sleep with him. However, she takes the letter without Sandy knowing. Justin, in the flashback, is oblivious to all this, but suspects that Tessa may have been having an affair with Arnold.
The film then re-emerges into the present with Tessa’s funeral and we see Justin taking centre stage in the story. Kioko, the brother of the girl that Tessa believed was being murdered brings a card written on Dypraxa packaging. This starts Justin’s own investigation into what Tessa and Arnold had been doing. His suspicions are further enhanced when the police raid his house and confiscate Tessa’s files and computer. He does however find a secret box that contains Tessa’s diary, and also a letter from Sandy declaring his love for her. It also crucially asks for an unspecified object back.
Justin starts to probe and begins to learn about the links that Tessa uncovered. He discovers that Arnold was gay and that Tessa’s report had been buried. He is recalled to London by Sir Bernard. On arrival his passport is confiscated and he is advised over lunch by Pellegrin to take some sick leave and to stop asking questions. He has also started to receive threatening letters. He meets Tessa’s cousin and solicitor Arthur Hammond (Richard McCabe) who gives Justin more information about the links that Tessa had made on the internet with fellow activists. He also arranges a false passport for him so that he can travel, firstly to Berlin to meet one of his wife’s fellow activists to gain more information.
After gaining some information, Justin is beaten up and warned off. He returns to Kenya, where he confronts Sandy. He discovers that Tessa had no intention of keeping her promise to Sandy and it also emerges that Arnold has also been tortured and crucified. Justin is tipped off by one of the men that Tessa was investigating that the letter that she had stolen was now in the possession of a doctor who had formerly worked for the drugs company, Lorbeer (Pete Postlethwaite). www.filmeducation.org 3
Justin travels to Sudan where he finds Lorbeer and gets the letter. He arranges this to be posted. He then ends his journey at Lake Turkana, where Tessa was raped and murdered, to await his own fate. At a memorial service in London, Pellegrin speaks regrettably of Justin’s ‘suicide’ although this is intercut with men arriving at the lake to kill Quayle. The film finishes with Arthur Hammond publicly reading aloud Pellegrin’s letter which strongly suggests that Justin and Tessa were murdered.
But the film is much more than just an investigative thriller. At each stage of his discoveries, Justin learns more and more about his wife and the film becomes a love story of sorts. The film offers a powerful condemnation of how the West colludes with those in power - in this case the Kenyan government - to take advantage of the poor and defenceless for financial gain.