The destruction of the Berlin Wall
signaled not only the demise of Soviet Communism and the end of Cold War, but
also, for many literary commentators, the death of the spy novel and
consequently, of the career of its most distinguished contemporary
practitioner, John le Carré.
That structure had served as the
great monument to the protracted conflict between East and West, an
appropriately ugly symbol for the war in the shadows of dangerous borders and
the crepuscular world of personal and national betrayal that appear constantly
in his work. The author, however, defied the critics in a series of outstanding
post-Cold War novels by continuing his brilliant examination of the moral
stagnation of governments, the corruption of capitalism, the manipulative power
of international organizations, and the cruelty and injustice of political
leaders in all parts of the globe.
One of those novels, The Constant Gardener, now adapted for
the screen, demonstrates John le Carré’s continuing concern for the situation
of individuals caught in the web of collusion between governments and
multinational corporations. The film displays a particularly telling relevance
to events in our own time in its depiction of the suffering of desperately ill
and impoverished Africans through the machinations of a giant pharmaceutical
company. It also, sadly, suggests the terrible cost in human life that such
companies extract from the poor, the weak, and the disenfranchised.
The movie essentially revolves around
a murder and a mystery, the killing of Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz), a young aid
worker found dead in a remote area of Kenya, where her husband Justin (Ralph
Fiennes) serves as a member of the diplomatic corps. As part of her work with
Kenyan women and children, Tessa had driven to the place with a doctor friend
to investigate the use of a particular drug among AIDS patients; she had also
sought some damning information that would reveal the nexus of corruption that
resulted in the drug-related deaths of thousands of Africans. Suspecting that
Tessa’s death was the work of thugs employed by a giant international
conglomerate, Justin embarks on a quest for the people behind her murder.
His journey takes him first to
England, then to Germany, back to Africa, and finally, full circle to the very
spot in Kenya where his wife met her death. In the process of his investigation
he encounters obstacles at every turn — a canceled passport, dark threats, a
vicious beating, and warnings from various representatives of both the
pharmaceutical firms and his government. He comes to comprehend the extent and
virulence of the conspiracy that caused Tessa’s death and now threatens him; he
further comes to understand the depth of the love he shared with his wife.
The director eliminates a good deal
of action and character from Le Carré’s long, eventful, and complex novel, but
retains its spirit and meaning as well as something of the author’s typical
method. Like the book, the picture jumps back and forth in time, for example,
as Justin recalls various moments in his life with his beloved Tessa, and
allows the audience to reconstruct the history of their relationship and
something of the breadth and complication of the evolving conspiracy.
The progress of Justin’s odyssey, in
addition, reveals a view of Africa as real as today’s bleak television news
reports of sick and hungry refugees, whole populations ravaged by illness and
starvation, and the attendant neglect of the more fortunate peoples of the
world.
Ralph Fiennes makes an appropriate
Justin Quayle, a gentle, decent, diffident man whom events and grief transform
into a sort of missionary for a cause, an impassioned idealist like his wife;
Fiennes conveys anguish perhaps more convincingly than any actor around, which
makes him a most appropriate character for the fiction of John le Carré.
In keeping with the author’s own care
with the living details of his world, the director filmed on location, making
East Africa and its inhabitants come fully alive in all their vitality, beauty,
squalor, and tragedy. The Brazilian director, Fernando Meirelles, brings to the
elegant prose of le Carré the eye and experience of a non-European from a
developing nation; his picture does justice to the intelligence and emotion of
the novel.
The Constant Gardener (R) directed
by Fernando Meirelles, is playing at Culver Ridge, Henrietta 18, Little
Theater, Pittsford Plaza, Webster 12, Tinseltown.
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2005.
