Saturday-Sunday: The Constant Gardener

Somehow, my day ends on the same line I've been following from the first film set down to watch. The Constant Gardener was released in a year of five nominees, but if put by today's Best Picture rules, it certainly would've made the top ten. The thriller follows Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), a British diplomat with a passion for gardening, who finds out that his wife Tess (Rachel Weisz) has been murdered in Africa. Within the first ten minutes, I was completely caught off guard by the events taking place. I'd heard that Rachel Weisz had won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the film, and going into this film with such little knowledge about it other than the main players, I was not expecting her to be dispensed with so quickly.

The first forty minutes of the film are dedicated to telling Tess' side of the story from the very first moment she met Justin, to her powerful activism in Africa, and eventually to her inevitable death. Every scene with her in it exists with such a pang of sorrow for what will happen to her. The man who holds most of the film together is Justin, who is always trying to do best by his job and to protect his wife no matter what. When she is taken from him, he goes through a magnificent transformation into a man with nothing to lose, and into a human being as brave and impassioned as Tess was in life.

The man with nothing to lose has been done in several forms, but none as convincing or true as Ralph Fiennes is here. The man is quite literally a genius who is able to play both heroes and villains with a commanding power and grace. Except for Hades in Clash of the Titans. That was just pathetic, sad as it is to say. Rachel Weisz does the best with what precious little screen time she is given. She's not a character who recurs throughout the film. She holds the screen with passion and vigor for the entire first act, and if it hadn't been a brilliant performance then we wouldn't have been carried through the rest of the film.

The supporting cast does a great job as well. Richard McCabe is that delightful geeky sidekick who comes in along the way to offer crucial intellect to help the case. Danny Huston still continues to draw out the worst in me, and I still hate him with all the blood and animosity I have in my veins. Here, his character is a complete douchebag so it's easier to hate him. It's no excuse for his piss poor talent. Bill Nighy keeps a nice presence as the main villain of our piece, and he's a lot more commanding and conspiratorial than he was in The Girl in the Cafe. He needs to merely flip one small switch on his immense switchboard to channel his energy into a completely new character.

Things are pushed forward by the high energy tight wire musical score, and the textured cinematography. However, like I said before, this film does follow a line through the other films I've seen today, but more so with The Girl in the Cafe. Where as that film was a more romantic and politically minded film, it still dealt with powerful female leads trying their best to improve life in Africa wherever they can. In both films, it takes a while for their men to finally understand the point and stick up for what they always believed in. Needless to say that Justin Quayle pays more dearly for contributing than Lawrence did. The Constant Gardener is a physically and emotionally activating thriller, and a more than worthy end to the first of my two day series.

A-