Cinematic Wanderings
By Luke Mindell

He Keeps Gardening, and Gardening, and Gardening...

Back in 2001, I saw a poorly reviewed espionage film called, The Tailor of Panama. Despite its negative reputation, I found it enthralling! John Le Carré wrote the book on which the film was based and after seeing this film, I sought out other Le Carré books. I found his take on the spy genre to be the most interesting I have ever experienced, and when I finally read The Tailor of Panama, I discovered how unfaithful the film was to the original story.
When I heard that there was another Le Carré book slated for adaptation into a film, The Constant Gardner, my excitement was tempered by a fear that this book, too, would undergo intensive Hollywoodification. In the Le Carré spy world gadgets and violence take a back seat to human frailty and institutional corruption. In every Le Carré book I have read, the driving force of the main character is not governmental or militaristic, but personal.
In The Tailor of Panama, a man feeds false information to a British spy, instigating an American invasion of Panama. He does not do it to create counter intelligence or to ferret out a double agent, but to make money so he can pay off his debts. Or, in another Le Carré book, Our Game, a British secret agency is desperate to find out why one of it’s agents has gone missing, never suspecting that his disappearance was the result of a murderous, jealous lover.
That personal, emotional part of the story is also dominant in the latest film adaptation of a John Le Carré novel. In The Constant Gardener, a man searches for the truth about his wife’s death. Ralph Fiennes plays Justin Quayle, a British diplomat living in Kenya with his wife Tessa. Tessa, an outspoken liberal, uses her uncommon access to elite dinner parties to confront government officials and pharmaceutical company bigwigs about unethical practices in Kenya.
A few minutes in to the film, a close family friend tells Justin of a car accident that claimed Tessa’s life. We see Justin’s face for the whole scene. He tries to conceal his emotions but he fails to hide the turmoil in his mind. This is a real test for any actor, and Fiennes pulls it off with crushing intensity. At this moment, only a few minutes into the film, I am utterly immersed in Justin’s story.
One of my favorite things about the Le Carré universe is that it’s populated with lot’s of old British aristocrats who meet on golf courses and in the back rooms of private clubs filled with the smell of cigar smoke and gourmet food. It is always interesting to listen to these characters discuss how to carve up the world’s assets among themselves. Bill Nighy, who you may remember from his standout performance in Love, Actually (so I hear – I haven’t seen it), or his wonderful turn as Shaun’s Stepfather in Shaun of The Dead, plays Sir Bernard Pellegrin, the most nefarious of the old chaps.
Fernando Meirelles, who directed The Constant Gardener, also directed the Oscar winning City of God, a film that looked at the gritty underbelly of a Rio de Janeiro housing project. Such a director did not seem to be the obvious choice to bring a British political thriller to the screen, but his sensibilities are just what the genre needed. He brought a sense of grime (the only word that accurately describes it) to the usually sterile genre. Let’s face it, corrupt politicians and crooked pharmaceutical company CEO’s are as grimy as they get.
Le Carré likes to give his protagonists characteristics that apply to all aspects of their lives. In The Tailor of Panama, the central character is a world-class tailor, cutting and shaping expensive fabrics to fit customers like a glove, or, in this case, a very expensive suit. The ability to shape things so they fit the needs of others comes in handy when he starts making up false intelligence about a non-existent Panamanian resistance group. He shapes and polishes his lies so they are exactly what his customer, a British spy who’s paying for the information, wants.
In The Constant Gardener, Justin Quayle is, you guessed it, an avid gardener. He maintains the garden, he tills the soil, he weeds things out, and he looks under rocks. When his wife dies, he becomes obsessed with finding the weeds that choked out Tessa, his most treasured flower.
There is no grand moment of retribution where Justin takes on eighty-eight swordsmen or puts a bullet in the head of Tessa’s killer, but the ending is nonetheless satisfying. Hell, it’s perfect!
Having not read the book, I can’t tell you how well the screenwriters adapted it. What I can tell you is that The Constant Gardener has a script of great density, but equally great fluidity, and if you don’t pay attention, you will miss some very subtle, very important plot points.
There is no innovative filmmaking to speak of, although, these days, quality is almost innovative in itself. There is no single underlying thing that makes this a film worth watching. It is simply well written, wonderfully directed, impressively acted and bloody compelling. If you want a break from eye candy special effects films, dumb comedies, and derivative dramas, go see The Constant Gardener. It’s like fertilizer for you’re brain!