Savage gardener?
The Constant Gardener
dir. Fernando Meirelles; starring: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Bill Nighy
2/5
It’s a message movie and it’s a thriller. How does it combine the two? By having the message be precisely what the protagonist himself is trying to uncover. The race is on… to find the point of the film. Great. It is quite ingenious - an antibig- Pharmaceuticals polemic that takes two hours to make one point, ultimately obliquely and quietly, only twenty seconds before it ends. Clap. Clap. Clap. “The stuff of golden statuettes!” one critic has said. And yes, it probably is.
How depressing. For it is a pretty much a complete failure of a film. The story is forgetfully handled; characterisation is bizarrely inconsistent; the score passes completely unimpeded through one ear and out of the other. The events take place largely in Africa, such a beautiful and diverse continent, but one which has been completely etiolated into the clichéd and uninteresting by a thousand wildlife programmes.
There are lots of ponderous shots of flocks of birds and bright brown plains and - oh - gosh - they are so completely dull. There are certain powerful moments. Many are produced by the director displaying brave faith in actors rather than the devices of cinema, particularly editing - giving admirable time and space for Fiennes in particular to effect a very sophisticated and dense performance. In one scene he grievingly dribbles snot and sweat all over his patio doors.
It is most affecting. But there is little else good here.
17th Nov 2005