"The Constant Gardener" (2005) - Movie Review

Bringing together a controversial reality along with the entertainment factor is the cornerstone of a successful story. The arduous task is to deliver those concepts in such a way that it does not get lost in the “entertainment factor” by the director trying to quench the taste of “Friday Night” audiences. “The Constant Gardener” touches the line of the previous statement and tries to deliver how the benefits for the most parts of the world have been denied consistently for some other countries. The acclaimed and praised director of “City of God” Fernando Meirelles debuted through “The Constant Gardener” in the international arena.

Justin Quale (Ralph Fiennes), a British Diplomat investigates his activist wife Tessa’s (Rachel Weisz) brutal murder in Northern Kenya. The investigation uncovers some bitter truths in his lost love and that of bigger governments tying hands with corporate moguls to use a helpless country as a testing ground for their drug for sole business intentions. The story greatly deplores the hunt for truth by Justin and the haunting realities of a nation so deserted and chaotic.

The scenes involving the blossoming love in between Justin and Tessa are subtle and give those intense intimacies a naïve and luscious colour and also slowly stitching those in audience’s memories. Those leading sequences fires up the momentum and provides the fuel necessary to trigger an emotional and entertaining mystery. The movie rattles and falters in the mid of the movie losing those geared up solid jumpstart scenes. The pain of a loved one being lost could have been showed in more appropriate moment rather than during a tense investigation. The application of using those was not executed perfectly. One of the main reason for stumbling story was due to the unraveling the suspense in the midst of the motion picture. The leadings were so predictable that except the protagonist everyone just gives up the whole key players and Tuxedo Bandits behind the act. There is no denial that the story is haunting and horrifying but the concentration went off the highway once all the clues are no more clues rather than a bunch of explanatory answers.

Ralph Fiennes impresses as a husband who is torn by his loss but unable to balance the will and character of a “Jason Bourne” and the diplomatic softness of Justin in same split screen. Rachel Weisz completely mesmerizes as the open, daunting, caring and emotionally explicit Tessa. Her screen presence is totally overwhelming. The interesting part of the movie which is the initial one hour belongs to her and she justifies it with the viewers falling in love with the character as Justin does in a short span of time. The supporting role does not come as supportive as it should have been from the other performers sadly due to the lack of substance in the reasoning factor of the story.

The desolated and withered countries of Africa are shown with vibrant and saddening colours. The editing followed notebook rules of ingenuity all over the motion picture. There is some couple of touching dialogues but it gets lost by the blurriness of the screenplay in the latter half of the movie.

“The Constant Gardener” is still a watchable movie which may not hit the audience as it had been aimed but the team work involved in the initial sequences makes the viewer expect for more of those. Unfortunately, the team work got dismantled miserably in the latter stages of the movie to cripple the gardener. The unnecessary use of “gardener” in the previous line is how the movie uses it for the protagonist who does represent neither his display of a peculiar characteristics for the movie nor the core concept of the story as “The Constant Gardener”. Or maybe I did not get it.