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| Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes, nice people. |
Written by Jeffrey Caine, John le Carré (novel)
Sooner or later, I’ll find myself writing about a film with a weak cast, or, at least, with a poor choice for the lead. There’s no shortage of them around, after all. I’m also bound to find myself writing properly, sooner or later, about Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, seeing as I’ll be mentioning it again here. But that’ll have to wait until the dvd emerges, as it really is a little too long since I’ve seen it. If you’ve made the effort to read this, you probably want something that’s fresh in my mind, yes? Anyway, I’m going to pretend that you care about that, not too concerned about the truth of the matter.
John Le Carré is concerned about the truth. In place of the usual disclaimer in the credits of a fictional film – any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional – we have a message from the author:
Nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world. But I can tell you this; as my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realise that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.
The man has a point. I’m not here to argue about the behaviour of the pharmaceutical industry – not that I dispute Le Carré’s assertions nor any of the other damning criticism and horror stories about such companies’ roles in poorer countries, far from it; I simply wouldn’t like to claim that I have any particular knowledge about the subject. Rather, I’m writing about the movie, as a movie rather than as a protest, and yes, it does have certain similarities to a holiday postcard.
That’s not to say it’s a bad film; it isn’t. Nor is it to say that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. Perhaps it didn’t help that it was lacking the elegance, subtlety and rich emotional undercurrents of the most recent picture from a Le Carré novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Perhaps the comparison is unfair: The Constant Gardener is an entirely different (and much newer) story, and I accept that it’s not entirely reasonable to set the two movies alongside one another just because they came from novels by the same author. On the other hand, I’m not an entirely reasonable person. Most of us aren’t.
Anyway, even if I put Tinker, Tailor to the back of my mind, I nevertheless stand by my postcard comment. There’s nothing essentially wrong with postcards. A good postcard is attractive, interesting, offers a straightforward method of communication for simple ideas, coupled with a nice, straightforward, uncritical picture of where you are. So it is for The Constant Gardener. I’ve no qualms with the look of the film – César Charlone has photographed a fine piece of work, taking every drop of beauty from the gorgeous east African vistas, without compromising the bleakness of the poverty. But the look is what postcards tend to do well.
What they lack is the scope for a complex message, for a depth of understanding, and depth and complexity are both sadly lacking from The Constant Gardener. The good guys are good, pure, noble, lovely. The bad guys – the Three Bees pharmaceutical company and its supporters in diplomatic circles – are unswervingly evil. I’m sure there are deeply unpleasant people in pharmaceuticals and diplomacy, and I’m sure there are terrific individuals fighting against them, but it might have been nice if the brush strokes had been a little less broad, if there’d been some shades of grey, if the conflict between Good and Evil had been not quite so absolute. Only Rachel Weisz plays a character at all in the middle between nice and nasty, and even then – as a dedicated campaigner against the dangerous and abusive behaviour of Three Bees – we’re never in any doubt on which side she really falls.
So, ultimately, we’re left with a tremendous cast all slotting into obvious and shallow roles. And with such acting ability, with a gifted DP and a fine director in Meirelles, the lack of complexity seems wasteful. Yet, as I said, it’s not a bad film, and I enjoyed it. But it could have been a magnificent film, and I could have loved it. That it didn’t work out that way really is a bit of a shame.
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