The Constant Gardener (film)

The Constant Gardener
Promotional poster
Directed by	Fernando Meirelles
Produced by	Simon Channing-Williams and Gail Egan
Screenplay by	Jeffrey Caine
Story by	John le Carré (novel)
Starring	Ralph Fiennes Rachel Weisz Hubert Koundé Danny Huston Bill Nighy John Sibi-Okumu Packson Ngugi Archie Panjabi Pete Postlethwaite
Music by	Alberto Iglesias
Cinematography	César Charlone
Editing by	Claire Simpson
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release date(s)	31 August 2005 (2005-08-31) (United States) 11 November 2005 (2005-11-11) (United Kingdom)
Running time	129 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$25 million
Box office	$82,466,670

The Constant Gardener is a 2005 drama thriller film directed by Fernando Meirelles. The screenplay by Jeffrey Caine is based on the John le Carré novel of the same name.

The film follows Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), a British diplomat in Kenya, as he tries to solve the murder of his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz), an Amnesty activist. The story is told using many flashbacks and it is gradually revealed that Tessa was trying to uncover dubious drug tests by a Swiss-Canadian drug company on the local population.

The film also stars Hubert Koundé, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy and Donald Sumpter. It was filmed on location in Loiyangalani and the slums of Kibera, a section of Nairobi, Kenya. Circumstances in the area affected the cast and crew to the extent that they set up the Constant Gardener Trust in order to provide basic education for these villages. The plot was based on a real-life case in Kano, Nigeria.

The DVD versions were released in the United States on 1 January 2006 and in the United Kingdom on 13 March 2006.

Plot

Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), a shy low-rung British diplomat and horticultural hobbyist posted in Kenya, is one to avoid making a fuss until he learns that his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) was found dead on the veldt. Tessa has been murdered at a crossroads along with her Kenyan driver. Her colleague doctor Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Koundé) is initially suspected of her murder but is later found to have been murdered on the same day as Tessa. Various rumours abound that the two were having an affair; however, it is later revealed that Bluhm was in fact gay.

In flashbacks, we see how in London, Justin met his future wife Tessa, an outspoken humanitarian and Amnesty activist, falls in love with her and how she persuades him to take her back with him to Kenya.

As the mystery surrounding his wife's death unfolds, Justin is radicalised in his determination to get to the bottom of her murder. He soon runs up against a drug corporation that is using Kenya's population for fraudulent testing of a tuberculosis drug ("dypraxa") with known harmful side effects and disregards the well-being of its poor African test subjects.

Danny Huston plays Sandy Woodrow, the British High Commissioner on the scene. Bill Nighy is Sir Bernard Pellegrin, head of the Africa Desk at the Foreign Office and thus Justin's and Sandy's boss. After finding out the truth about what happened to Tessa, Justin is killed at the place where she died.

Justin's gentle but diligent attention to his plants is a recurring background theme, from which image the film's title is derived.

Cast

• Ralph Fiennes as Justin Quayle
• Rachel Weisz as Tessa Quayle
• Danny Huston as Sandy Woodrow
• Hubert Koundé as Arnold Bluhm
• Archie Panjabi as Ghita Pearson
• Bill Nighy as Sir Bernard Pellegrin
• Gerard McSorley as Sir Kenneth Curtis
• Pete Postlethwaite as Dr. Lorbeer
• Donald Sumpter as Tim Donohue

Reception

Box office

The film grossed $33,579,797 in North America and $48,886,873 in other territories, totaling $82,466,670 worldwide.

Critical response

Reviews have generally been very positive. On the film aggregator website, Rotten Tomatoes reported that 83% of 181 sampled critics gave the film positive reviews and that it got a rating average of 7.6 out of 10. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "one of the year's best films." However, Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice criticized the film as "a cannonballing mélange of hack-cuts, impressionistic close-ups, and tropical swelter." Ty Burr of The Boston Globe said the film diminishes "the real urgency of the West's humanitarian disconnect from Africa. If it sends audiences home to log on to the Amnesty International website, terrific – but that still doesn't make it a very good movie."

Awards

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, and Best Supporting Actress (Weisz). Weisz won both an Oscar and Golden Globe for her performance. The film was also nominated for two other Golden Globe Awards: Best Motion Picture (Drama), and Best Director. Additionally, Weisz won the 2005 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

The film was nominated for 10 BAFTA Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. It also won the award for Best Editing.

The film won the award for Best Film at the London Critics Circle Film Awards, British Independent Film Awards, and Evening Standard British Film Awards. The film also received the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.

Author's dedication and afterword

John le Carré, in his original novel, provided a dedication and also a personal afterword. Both the dedication and part of the afterword (amended) are reproduced in the closing credits of the film. The first states: "This film is dedicated to Yvette Pierpaoli and all other aid workers who lived and died giving a damn". The latter continues (in the next credit): "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 realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard". The text appears over John le Carré's name.

See also

• Kano trovafloxacin trial litigation

External links

• Official website
• The Constant Gardener at the Internet Movie Database
• The Constant Gardener at AllRovi
• The Constant Gardener at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Constant Gardener at Box Office Mojo