2012 Tarkovsky Prize Runner Up: Bailey Lewis Van
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
By Bailey Lewis Van
Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener is a political thriller starring Ralph Fiennes as a low ranking politician, Justin Quayle, searching for answers in the wake of the his wife’s murder. While searching, Justin discovers a pharmaceutical company testing potentially deadly AIDS treatments on impoverished Africans, leading him to conclude that the society his life is built around, and that he strongly believes in, is corrupt and that his wife was a casualty in the fight for the rights of the African people.
The Constant Gardener, unlike many films, has a non-linear timeline. This, at first, is very disorienting as there is no clear distinctions in the timeline: first they are together in Africa, then there is an explosion, then the two characters are just meeting and in the next shot she is pregnant. Although the cutting back in forth from past to present to future takes effort to follow and begins to break apart all that you have ever thought about time, it allows the viewer to collect details and make connections that Justin Quayle could not make, while seeing things in their original order. This technique adds a layer of depth and increases tension as Justin stumbles into something that we are just beginning to realize is dangerous.
Most of the film takes place in a village in Africa. This choice of setting may seem to some just another cliché drama: white people using devastating third-world conditions as an exotic backdrop to their sordid affairs. This film, however, is bound strongly to the abuse of citizens in third world countries. The Constant Gardener unlike many thrillers set in the exotic third world, actually says something about global politics. It makes the viewer think about the role of the “white saviors” and the liberties these saviors think they can take with the people they are saving. The logic being that as we (the white savior) are pouring time and resources into you (the people of the third world country) we have the right to take some liberties with your health for the betterment of mankind, which amounts a really sick, twisted racism, the idea of a master race. What makes this film so poignant is the revolting racism and dehumanization of an entire race of people.
This film is carried emotionally by the viewers’ curiosity and repulsion more than empathy for the actors. Justin Quayle, although interesting, does not create a very sympathetic character. The viewer may not be completely invested in him; they may not care if his wife was cheating on him with a doctor and how this affects him. The emotional arc of the film is centered on what they each learn about the evils being done to the people of Africa. In this sense the protagonist is not Justin Quayle, even though the film follows him. The protagonist is all of the Africans in this country being taken advantage of by pharmaceutical company which, because it feels like they are allowed to take something back—experiment on human beings as if they are rabbits in a lab.
Tessa, Justin Quayle’s wife, balances out Justin’s lack of screen charisma with her empathy. Tessa is another reason that Africa is not the exotic backdrop to a white man’s affair. A large part of what the viewer knows about Tessa is what he/she gleans from her interaction with the impoverished people in Africa and her reaction to Justin’s lack of empathy for the people she cares so much about.
The Constant Gardener is a film about abuse and empathy. The effect that the “white savior” has on the developing world and the horror of what they do to the people who stand in their way and, despite the confusing jump cuts and the lack of empathy in some of the characters the film conveys its message strongly and effectively.