A Heart-Wrenching Story of Love and Loss: The Constant Gardener Movie Review

I saw a whole bunch of movies this month, and I plan to talk about them shortly in a separate blog post, but since The Constant Gardener was the very best of the lot, and because I loved it so much, I want to go into a little more detail on this one.

Billed as a thriller based on a John le Carré novel, I went in prepared to watch a taut edge-of-the-seat kind of movie. What I wasn’t prepared for was how moving and beautiful the movie was.

The movie stars Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes, directed by Fernando Meirelles.

A brief synopsis of the Movie

Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is a fairly shy, low-rung British diplomat, more interested in gardening than in his posting to Kenya, upholding flag and honor for the realm. His wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) is a beautiful and impassioned activist.

His life of avoiding or making a fuss is completely overturned when he learns his wife has been found dead, gruesomely murdered, in a remote portion of the African veld.

Prompted by an inner vague unease, and general hints from people about Tessa’s infidelity, Justin tries to trace back his wife’s movements only to realize he never knew much about her at all, and also ends up opening a Pandora’s box of horrible things going on in Africa that have been shoved under the rug.

My Thoughts

I haven’t read the book it’s based on, but the movie is done so well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it surpasses the book in quality.

This movie is superficially a thriller, but it is also a movie about regrets, about not living life to the fullest, about the courage to stand up and tell the truth, and above all, it’s a haunting love story.

From the moment when the movie begins, we know it’s not going to end well.

A few minutes into the movie, Sandy Woodrow – Justin’s colleague comes to deliver the news that his wife Tessa has died somewhere on the banks of Lake Turkana. She was traveling with Arnold Bluhm, a doctor of African descent from Belgium, but he is nowhere to be found.

While Justin goes over her effects while cleaning up, he finds some stuff that indicates something was going on with Tessa. At first, he suspects a love affair between her and Bluhm, but soon he comes to realize that his wife was finding out too much information about a new experimental drug called Dyparxa. He slowly figures out what is happening and determines to finish what she started. Despite a lot of warnings and advice

He cannot stop himself from investigating the case and arguing (in his quiet way) for justice.

What I love about the movie

I think what I love most about the movie is the sense of conscience and how Justin slowly evolves from being a regular guy who turns a blind eye to suffering, thinking that someone else is taking care of it to someone who can no longer ignore the realities of life around him. Here are a couple of dialogues illustrating how Tessa’s death changes his outlook.

An argument he has with Tessa in the beginning of the movie

An argument he has with an aid worker toward the end of the movie

[Aid workers are being airlifted from a village ahead of a band of raiders. Justin brings aboard a local village girl]

This movie won Rachel Weisz, a Best Supporting Actress Academy award, and I have to say, her performance though good, does not seem to deserve an actual award. That said, I am glad this movie got something. Overall, it’s a fantastically crafted movie, and the whole team did a great job – the acting, the cinematography, the script, the direction- everything was top-class. I loved it completely.

I watched this movie on an airplane (hardly ideal for watching this type of serious movie), but I plan to re-watch it sometime on TV as well. I also want to read the book now.

Have you read the book? Watched the movie? Which is better?