This is a first rate film, directed with assurance and maturity by Fernando Meirelles. Reynolds has mentioned before how I felt great ambivalence about City of God. It was a dazzling piece of filmmaking but it seemed to me that Meirelles foregrounded his skills as a director over the provocative material; the results being a film that makes a commodity spectacle out of poverty and crime. There is some of that in The Constant Gardener, but I still feel as if the filmmakers work very diligently to not get in the way of the story (even if the generic designs of Le Carre’s conspiracy thriller drag things down in its final act). I look forward to our discussion. This is a film worth talking and arguing about.
For the first time in a long time, I left the movie theater thinking I had seen a very good film.
Constant Gardener was one of my favorite books I’ve read over the past couple of years, and I had high hopes for this film, which largely exceeded them.
It’s impressive that after two films Meirelles has developed an instantly recognizable style. Who else has done that? Jarmusch I guess: His style (in his early films) was instantly recognizable, though not very enjoyable to sit through). Wes Anderson: though it’s more gimmicky than substantial.
The blown-out colors, hand-held camera work, and focus on the nexus of the worlds of the haves and have-nots impressed me more here than in City of God, not to slight that film.
I was worried the film would descend into English Patient-style sentimentality when Quayle returned to his UK house, and it verged on doing so, but I’ll forgive that. Rachel Weisz did a decent job of impersonating Helena Bonham Carter.
One of my least favorite bits of suspense in the book (the old “guess the password” cliche – that le Carre should be way beyond – was dispensed with neatly in the film. And though of course the strings of the plot came together far too neatly – as they must to fit into 2 hours – it didn’t really undercut much of the plot’s basic points: The intersection of industry and government, and that all lives are not created equally.
This should get nominated for best editing, best adapted screenplay, best actor, and best director.
Didn’t you feel that the film (and the filmmaking) was better than the story? I guess I walked away from the film wishing that the content had lived up to the craft and artistry on display (and I guess that’s a rare response for me). While Meirelles’ work (and the editor who worked with him on City of God) definitely has a unique style, I still feel as if this film showed greater maturity than City of God (not to mention all the music videos he directed before that). I can’t take credit for something that David Edelstein wrote before I saw the film (even if I had the same thought before reading his review), but this film feels more hushed and impressionistic; less willing to turn it up to 11 when 8 will do just fine. Does that make sense or am I just wanking?
That does make sense, but I think that’s what the material itself demanded: It’s a disconcertingly quiet novel about a disoncertingly quiet man. And while he gets involved in very large things, he stays the way he is. He doesn’t become James Bond.
I guess my difference is that I really liked the source material, and since the film didn’t mess with that much, I didn’t really try to differentiate between the filmmkaing and the story. And in good films, I never do split the two up.
OK here’s another question: amid all the manipulation of the film (desaturating color whenever we are in “western” spaces; cherry ripe whenever we find ourselves in the slums of Nairobi; the bold rusts and oranges and purples of the Kenyan landscape) one could argue that Meirelles and his DP and his post-production people position the slums (no matter how much trash litters the ground) and the desolate, barren landscapes as edenic paradises compared to the evils of western political and economical hegemony. For example, notice how clean, bright and colorful the clothes (costumes) are in the slums, how bright and shining and clean the faces of the street kids, how perfectly red Kioyko’s mourning attire is. Is this not a romanticization of poverty? Are we repelled by such living conditions or does the film give us permission to see such spaces as nearly utopic (if we could only rid such idealized spaces of the evil western other)?
I remember the post production digital processing used in Soderbergh’s “Traffic” raised similar concerns. The scenes in Mexico were grainy, washed out, and tinted yellow-brown. Quite the opposite, I think, of what Meirelles is trying to achieve with the sequences in the slums of Nairobi. I recall how some people felt the look of Soderbergh’s film was insulting, that the manipulation of the Mexico sequences implied that because Mexico was “corrupt” and “dirty,” the film itself must be “corrupted” and “dirtied.” I understood the criticism, but I couldn’t help but make the point that the Mexico sequences seemed to me quite beautiful.
Jeff – I think it’s a valid interpretation of the use of color. But I did read it a little differently. To my mind the only thing that the UK represented to Quayle upon returning was being alone and miserable. The colors represent that. (During the flashback scenes we actually see a very warm city and scenes.) As Quayle says, “I have no home. Tessa was my home.” So, anyplace where she was comfortable and happy is going to be where Quayle feels better – which somewhat explains his final actions in the film.
The color I think represents his internal life to some degree, but “life” and the vitality of the people in general to a greater degree.
As for romanticizing Kenya / poverty, I think Meirelles would argue that to the death. Keep a couple practical notes in mind: The book was very critical of Kenya, and there was the idea the Kenyan gov’t would never let them film there. In the end their gov’t. said, “Look, it’s a film set in Kenya – shoot it in Kenya – we need the money.” To that end there may have been some compromise: Showing the people as poor is fine; showing them as poor-without-dignity (as Dr. Paul Farmer would say) would have been unacceptable.
Finally, this is not a small art film. It’s a big studio film with stars that is expected to make money and get awards. It’s not going to show the worst things that a movie about TB in Kenya could show.
I had just finished Mounatins Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It’s a good book about an amazing guy (Dr. Paul Farmer again), and ties in somewhat closely to this film. Except in Haiti. Highly recommended, though probably a little close to home considering the destruction seen on TVas of late.
I finally saw this–and only spent $2!–last night. Two quick thoughts:
1. Editing, editing, editing. I’m astonished by many of the qualities you folks noted, from cinematography to performances to content. But the film has some of the most densely-informative cuts I’ve seen in… well, forever. The first hour–how we learn about the death and life of Tessa (and how our learning is interwoven with Justin’s, and yet the two learning curves are not coincident)–is a master class in the use of film syntax to tell the story.
Even more, Meirelles is able to convey so much social and physical landscape, not just in “shots” but in the rhythms of crowd scenes. I was perhaps more fond of City than others, seeing in it some density of cultural critique–but this film’s more tempered energies, its simmering rage, allow the director more room to engage in, rather than flash over and (potentially) consume as spectacle, this “other” non-Western space.
2. I was therefore slightly disappointed in the film’s second half; the mystery is really solved long before Justin gets a fake passport, or even hits the road. After the density of detail and context for the first hour, what we have is more intent on plot–forward motion, rather than lateral and backward. It still engaged me, and I thought Fiennes was quite good, but whatever the political message we still have one man’s quest to fight injustice…. whereas the deep convoluted background of Tessa’s struggle seemed both more involving *and* more in line with the film’s politics.
It’s a small complaint; the film was very strong.
Today I’m off to see Fiennes without a nose.
Which came first, the screenplay or the editor? Are you conflating editing (the mechanics of moving from shot to shot and from scene to scene) with plot (how the story is arranged or structured)?
Um, no, of course I’m not conflating editing and plot. Oh wait, yes I am. Or, um… is that a good thing? Or is this one of those koans with no answer?
No, I’m not. I’ll give the screenplay lots of credit, ’til I learn otherwise, but what I’m talking about is mood, tone, emotion, even a way to contextualize and foreground aspects of performance that come from the mechanics of editing from shot to shot.
I’ll give you a couple of for-instances:
–when Sandy comes into Justin’s office to inform him of Tessa’s death (no spoiler–it’s like the third or fourth scene of the film), as Sandy talks instead of a two-shot back-and-forth, the camera stays on Justin’s face. We hear Sandy–but what he’s saying is almost muted; instead, we learn by watching Justin’s face, the information sort of sinking in because it’s not so audible. Meirelles pretty clear had footage for a two-shot (given some shots around the revelation, where we see Sandy standing and his dialogue loud and clear), but I think this is one of those editing-room choices. (We’ll wait for the dvd commentary.)
–The first showing of the visit to the morgue, which is superbly shot from corpse-level, from waist-level looking up from tables to Justin and Sandy, and foregrounds the physicality of these bodies–but is also contextualized to disorient us, with cuts before and after that “rush in” or “rush out” of the viewing. That contrast of frenzied action and emotion, with the stillness and illness of the body viewing… it’s viscerally effective. (The film returns–pointedly, precisely–to this scene for some intercuts later on, flashing back in ways that do not exploit but mine the emotions of the scene in new ways.)
jesus, have you been taking management courses? please says “examples” not “for-instances”. you’re giving me nightmare flashbacks of a “blue-chip” sales v.p peoplelink hired right before the end to make it come faster.
Sorry–just running it up the flagpole, to see who salutes. Throwing it out on the pond to see if it skips. Poking its belly to see if it giggles. Sniffing its ass to see if it’s friendly.
we watched this last night. the first 30 odd minutes were quite good but i thought it got progressively worse as it went on. i didn’t think there was anything particularly interesting about the colour coding in the cinematography–a little formal flash but it didn’t do anything for me thematically. about the plot/narrative (un)tangling, i take the points made above by mike about the mirroring of the audience and the protagonist’s learning about what they have remained complicitly ignorant of. however, i wasn’t sure why this needed to turn on a narrative of marital infidelity (ramped up by the possibility of interracial infidelity). i considered that what the film (and presumably the book) may be intending is to point out how justin (and the salacious viewer) are hellbent on reading the narrative personally, and they have to go through this to get to the political. perhaps, but i’m not entirely convinced that this particular paranoid masculine narrative is the best way to get that point across. and in any case this tearing apart of the relentlessly personal by the political is defused by the second half of the film which essentially is about fiennes trying to put the personal back together through the political (ending finally with the fantasy return to his “home” at the end of the film).
what bothers me most, however, is the feeling that all political intentions aside this is yet another film about first world liberals feeling bad about their (un)involvement with africa. as in my critique of hotel rwanda some months ago i wonder the extent to which films like this (and in a different genre, the interpreter) take up space that could be occupied by films moored in africa, heaven forbid, even made by african directors. it seems that at the level of psychological narrative africa remains a place where europe and america go to feel bad about themselves; and visually it is deployed somewhat exotically.
i’m not saying that the account of (neo)colonial exploitation, or “your mutual funds at work”, as charlie sheen says in the arrival (an underrated sci-fi flick from the mid-90s,) is not one worth pursuing; it is. but i think the expose of big pharma’s practices might be more effective if, like syriana with oil and dc power, it operated more on the terrain of that which it seeks to expose. (is “big pharma” an accepted abbreviation, by the way? i picked it up from mauer’s usage elsewhere in this blog.) this film instead becomes too much of a mish-mash, and after a while all that registers are the performances (fiennes is extraordinay) and the visual cleverness. which would not be such a problem if this film was less earnest about its politics.
I wouldn’t disagree at all about your critique of the film’s politics, Arnab. It is right on the money. But I think that its politics are secondary to its goals. Every Le Carre novel, at least from ‘Honorable Schoolboy’ onwards, with ‘Perfect Spy’ as probably the best example, uses the context (usually of the world of spying) as an excuse to explore men’s relationships. More often than not, it is the relationship of a man with his father, and one of the appeals of ‘Constant Gardner’ is that Le Carre turns his hand to exploring a marriage. The novels are very, very male, and not just male, but a very specific kind of restrained English public schoolboy male.
So the reason this movie worked for me is entirely Fiennes’ character. The initial love affair, the constant sense that his wife doesn’t in fact love him, or is using him for her own politics, the difficulty of being a diplomat married to someone who is so unlike the other diplomatic spouses, the mounting sense of injustice as Fiennes first recognizes that Tessa loved him, and that then liberates him from his repressed diplomatic mode of operation.
Anyway, I was also troubled by the vision, or version, or Africa that we got (and the gay doctor didn’t make it any less a story of white liberals), I just chose to see the whole big pharma story as an excuse for the exploration of a marriage.
Arnab, The Nation and Mother Jones use the abbreviation “Big Pharma” all the time. So I guess it’s kosher.
i like very much arnab’s summary of what is wrong with americans/europeans making movies like TCG and HR. i felt the impact of this particularly strongly in the village scene in which the whole african population got wiped out by men with guns and ralph fiennes escapes thanks to his friend with the helicopter. i am intensely, almost unbearably, annoyed by films that employ the iconographic motif of “black people running around.” the voicelessness and herd-like look of these extras is ominously reminiscent of that other big african trope, herds of gazelles chased by big cats.
I think much of Arnab’s criticism of this film is misplaced. For example:
“…what bothers me most, however, is the feeling that all political intentions aside this is yet another film about first world liberals feeling bad about their (un)involvement with africa. as in my critique of hotel rwanda some months ago i wonder the extent to which films like this (and in a different genre, the interpreter) take up space that could be occupied by films moored in africa, heaven forbid, even made by african directors.”
You’re blaming this film for taking up space that might have been used by an African director? Hardly. This is the first (or at least one of the only) modern films shot in Kenya, and probably brought the country its first taste of what a major studio picture shooting there is like. If anything, this might encourage some in Kenya to get invovled in filmmaking. But in no way does the fact that a studio backed this project mean that some African director was denied the green light by that studio.
If you want to blame a movie for you not being able to see better films told from other perspectives, blame the Dukes of Hazzard, the Longest Yard and Deuce Bigelow II. The studios think we want to see shit, so they make shit.
Also: LeCarre’s book is about a relationship, a mystery, and spying – like all 40 previous LeCarre books. It’s told from an Englishman’s perspective who spends most of his time in a foreign country – like all of his books. If the cold war was still going on it’d be set in Eastern Europe. The fact that there was a film set in Africa and shot there dealing with problems that Africans face is a good thing. I also want to see more of the kinds of films you describe, but in the spectrum of films made by the big studios, this one was about as far to one side of the spectrum (excellently shot, acted, edited with relevant subject matter) as Deuce Bigelow is on the other side.
I still want more films on this side of the spectrum – and there’ve been a good number this year, even if you think they were ham-fisted or simplistic, or too concerned with the white man’s point of view – and fewer big screen remakes of Small Wonder, Alf, or The Price is Right.
mark, you misunderstand me. i’m not arguing that this film (or others like it) block african films in that direct one-to-one kind of way. i’m sure there are very interesting films being made in africa already anyway (if not in kenya–though, again, i don’t know). i’m referring more to the degree to which films made by africans get to speak about african realities/subjectivities on a global level. yes, better this than out of africa or the air up there but that doesn’t mean it can’t be critiqued.
Just for the record, an Amer/Euro didn’t make the film–Fernando Meirelles, whatever you want to say about his economic pedigree, is Brazilian, and substantively altered the original screenplay to incorporate at least some sense of Africa as more than setting. He also brought in a Brazilian cinematographer and employed much on the ground crew, rather than importing it all. So the production, at least, DOES shift from the typical amer/euro representations of Africa.
I’d say more but I’m on the dime. Mauer’s reply says more of what I’d probably say, but I appreciated all the critiques, too. I love you all.
i just found out (NPR, of course) that the CG’s soundtrack, composed by alberto iglesias (who’s written the score for a bunch of almodovar movies), uses a lot of african instruments (percussions and wind instruments) in completely western melodies. some of the music is actually quite beautiful. i didn’t pay attention during the movie, but the piece i heard on the radio, some very cool jazz, was extremely nice. at first i thought: more western cultural imperialism. but then it came to me that maybe iglesias’ soundtrack is meant to emphasize the economical imperialism the movie decries.
you know, for a movie called The Constant Gardener, gardening plays a really negligible role. i’m just sayin’.
you mean, by enacting it?
Hee hee. That’s very funny, Arnab. Funnier even than all those ice dancers falling all over the ice.