'Constant Gardener' sprouts multiple, intricate themes
August 28, 2005
BY BILL ZWECKER Sun-Times Columnist
LONDON -- Film titles can be tricky. So much goes into the making of a movie, it's unfortunate when the title doesn't immediately conjure the picture's theme and concept. One of the best examples -- "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) -- was a much-honored film that took a good long time to find an audience because moviegoers were uncertain what it was all about.
So hearing the title "The Constant Gardener" (which opens Wednesday) isn't likely to tell the average moviegoer that it's a political thriller, unusual love story and expose of corporate and government corruption -- all thrown into one film.
"But that's why we have marketing and why I'm talking to people like you," said Ralph Fiennes, chatting recently in a Dorchester Hotel suite overlooking London's Hyde Park. "And besides, it's the title of John le Carre's book that it's based on and I think his huge international fan base provides an instant audience for us.
"Furthermore, when you think about it, the title is so perfect in describing Justin Quayle [Fiennes' character] and the the process he goes through in the arc of the story."
Early on, Justin's passion for gardening seems to be the only thing he is passionate about.
"I play this fellow who is a relatively unambitious British diplomat posted to Nairobi who loses his wife Tessa when she's brutally murdered," said Fiennes. "He starts being a very unconfrontational kind of man, but the shock of his wife's killing leads him to pick apart what went on, and in the process he revisits the nature of their relationship."
In a strange way, it's a love affair in reverse -- fueled by director Fernando Meirelles' extensive use of flashbacks combined with Justin's discovery of just how much he truly did love his wife.
"I think he falls in love with her all over again after she's gone and as he uncovers what she had been up to -- her work to uncover a vast and very corrupt corporate and political conspiracy," said Fiennes. "It's particularly intriguing since -- for much of the early part of the film -- Justin is suspicious of her; thinking she was having an affair. I think the film asks questions about relationships between people and personal honesty. The honesty between couples and not just at the level of betrayal, but just about simple communication."
Tessa (Rachel Weisz) is as fervent an activist as Justin is a milquetoast, by-the-book, mild-mannered bureaucrat. In fact, one wonders how the initial attraction and quick sexual romp was sustained long enough to lead them to the altar. There's always the old adage that "opposites attract," a concept Fiennes only buys up to a certain point.
"I think it can be true, but I don't think it's true all the time. I think there has to be some understanding at some level beneath the apparent opposition."
Still the actor believes in the final analysis the couple's relationship is the most interesting aspect of this story.
"Yes, it is a thriller and I love that aspect. Yes, it is about exposing corruption, both political and corporate, but at the end of the day it is Justin's discoveries about Tessa and his adoption of her passion for the cause of saving people's lives that makes this so compelling."
The cause in this case is uncovering the true relationship between an international drug company and the British and Kenyan governments over the testing of pharmaceuticals that possibly are endangering the lives of thousands, if not millions, of politically and economically powerless Africans.
Weisz has "always been fascinated by people like Tessa, who devote their lives to causes and are willing to give up everything, including their own lives if necessary, to work for people less fortunate than themselves."
Author le Carre has made it clear Tessa is actually inspired by a real woman he knew named Yvette Pierpaoli, a representative for Refugees International, killed in a car crash in Albania in the Balkans in 1999. In the closing credits for this film, based on his novel, le Carre describes Pierpaoli as having "lived and died giving a damn."
"I'm not that person," Weisz was quick to point out, claiming she knew little about Pierpaoli until after she had completed making the film. "I'm a storyteller. I'm an entertainer. I'm an actor. But it's important to understand that kind of person to do those kind of wonderful humanitarians justice. I really tried to get into their skin. I met people in Africa out in the field who possess that kind of dedication. I tried to absorb who they were in order to understand them and hopefully portray that kind of passion and commitment in my performance."
For Weisz, the experience of filming in Nairobi had a lasting impact on her as a human being.
"I had been to Kenya before, as a tourist on holiday," she said. "But that's a very different Africa to the Africa we were privileged to see making this movie." A number of key scenes were shot in Kibera -- "one of the largest slums in the world where a million people are living in a fairly small area. They live in abject poverty with no running water, no sanitation or electricity. There's a high incidence of HIV. It's extreme poverty like I've never seen before. Tourists never go there. White people never go there. Even Kenyans on our crew had never been there.
"And yet, I have never felt more welcomed or more at home than anywhere I've ever been before. The people were so generous, warm and hospitable. It was an extraordinary experience."
Meirelles wanted to be spontaneous and subtle in how he filmed the sequences in Kibera, so at times there would just be the director, an actor or two and a cameraman holding a small, hand-held camera.
"Fernando [Meirelles] just told us to interact with the people," Weisz said. "There are several scenes that weren't even in the script, but we left them in. Children came running up calling, 'How are you? How are you?' That's just the way it happened and Fernando wisely left that in. I loved the fact we had fictional characters interacting with real people in Africa."
The experience also taught Weisz a thing or two about the cultural divide that separates so many societies in the world.
"The parents of those children who came running up asked if that's also the way children in our country spoke to strangers. I said, 'Where I live, children are taught not to speak to strangers,' and the Kenyans were flabbergasted. They could not comprehend that. It was totally bizarre to them, given the openness and warmth of their culture."
Though the gardening referenced in the title of the film is clearly a metaphor, Fiennes did chuckle when asked how much acting was involved regarding the few scenes where Justin is seen fiddling with his beloved plants.
"Actually, I would love to have the time to garden," he said. "My father was a brilliant gardener and when I was young I gardened a little bit for pocket money. I thought it was very important that we saw [Justin] handling plants in the film in his spare time -- like he knew what he was doing, even though I'm not so good at it for real. It's all part of being an actor."
For Weisz, the atmosphere on the set was what she loved the most.
"Fernando creates such a relaxed world for us to inhabit," she said. "He created a feeling where we could be relaxed -- the way a husband and wife would be for real when they are having those little intimate moments. We were allowed to improvise and stray from the text and make things up and play a little bit.
"After all, in the real world couples don't speak in neat little lines to each other. They speak over each other. They interrupt each other. Real life is messy -- so we messed it up a little bit!"
Director goes Hollywood on his own terms
rrodriguez@herald.com
NEW YORK - Filmmaker Fernando Meirelles isn't naive enough to believe a movie can change the world. But it doesn't hurt to try, either.
''Films can bring awareness; you can shed light on topics and inform the audience,'' he says. ``I love to go to the cinema and learn about things. If a movie is set in Mongolia, you learn how they live, what they eat, what their culture is like, which is fascinating to me. And although you can't change things with a movie, you can certainly affect people -- the same people who can later go out and vote and put pressure on their governments as individuals.''
Of course, it helps if your movie happens to be a smashing entertainment, too. The Brazilian Meirelles' previous film, 2002's City of God, was a riveting, stylistic tour de force about street kids that melded the wiseguy savvy of Martin Scorsese, the cruel irony of Quentin Tarantino and the eye candy of The Matrix into something that felt vibrant, exhilarating and new.
City of God -- which set box-office records in Brazil, played in U.S. theaters for nearly a year and earned a surprise four Oscar nominations in 2003 (including a Best Director nod for Meirelles) -- also brought international attention to the plight of Rio de Janiero's favelas, or slums, and the sad fate of its youngest dwellers.
Now comes Meirelles' next film, The Constant Gardener, which opens in theaters Wednesday. Based on the novel by John Le Carre, the movie stars Ralph Fiennes as a British diplomat stationed in Kenya investigating the mysterious murder of his activist wife (played by Rachel Weisz). On one level, the movie is an affecting romance about a methodical, emotionally repressed man who has fallen out of love with his wife, then falls in love with her again in the process of investigating her death.
But The Constant Gardener is also a thriller, complete with hissable villains: Pharmaceutical companies testing new, potentially hazardous drugs on African citizens, who are too desperately in need of medical care to ask questions about potential side effects or demand compensation for the medical trials.
The movie interweaves those two storylines in dazzling fashion, and Meirelles, a veteran director of TV commercials, uses the same fluid camerawork and intricate editing he employed in City of God to create a complex, engrossing narrative that is as much about a mourning husband as it is about Kenya itself.
It's a strong follow-up for Meirelles, proving that City of God was no fluke. Ironically, the Sao Paulo native says he came to direct The Constant Gardener by accident. Sitting in the library lobby of Manhattan's Regency Hotel, Meirelles, 49, was flooded with offers after City of God opened in the United States, but he turned all of them down.
''They sent me some really good scripts,'' he says. ``Very different stories: the Cold War, the assassination of the archbishop in Canterbury, World War II in Italy, the Russian Mafia.''
Though Meirelles was tempted enough to fly to Los Angeles for meetings on several of the offers, he decided to continue working on his own project, a story about globalization that links various plotlines set in seven different regions around the world, including the Philippines, China, Brazil, the United States and Kenya.
Last year, as he was returning from Kenya on a research expedition for the film, Meirelles stopped in London to meet with Simon Channing Williams, who was producing The Constant Gardener. Mike Newell, who had been slated to direct the film, had bailed out in order to go off and make the upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
''Simon gave me the script, and I thought it was very original, with an interesting plot and very good villains,'' Meirelles says. ``When companies test drugs in the U.S. and Canada, you sign a contract, you're paid every month, you go into the lab every two weeks for a check-up. It's very expensive. In Africa, the people who sign the consent forms get free medical treatment for their families in exchange for testing the drugs. So it's not just an evil thing. That's the beauty of this kind of villain: The companies are doing good as well.
And since Meirelles had just visited Kenya, where The Constant Gardener takes place, and was excited about filming there, the director put his personal project on hold (he says it will probably be his next film) and set about making his English-language debut, working with big-name actors, a studio (Focus Features) and a budget ($25 million) that, while modest in Hollywood terms, was enormous by Brazil's standards.
The process was a learning experience for Meirelles. Fortunately, he says it was also a thoroughly happy one, since he enjoyed the same degree of creative control he had while making City of God, which he had produced himself.
''It was my next step in learning how to work with other people in the industry,'' Meirelles says. ``But they were very respectful every step of the way. They sent notes on the script and on my first cut, but always with the remark that they were only opinions and it was ultimately my decision.''
Even after the first test screening six months ago resulted in some confusion from viewers, Meirelles says he was allowed to preserve the film's complexity and careful plot construction as he and screenwriter Jeffrey Caine had envisioned it.
''Studio executives immediately want to clarify everything in a movie,'' he says. ``But to me, being confused is not necessarily bad, because it stimulates thought and concentration. Not understanding can be good. And this is definitely a film where the audience has to be active, not passive.''
Regardless of how The Constant Gardener fares at the box office, the movie ensures Meirelles' name will remain on the list of the recent wave of Latin American filmmakers making inroads into the Hollywood system. The director says he remains friends with Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) and Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries, Dark Water), and is immensely proud of their continuing successes.
More importantly, he's happy that their collective success has inspired budding filmmakers in his country to take a chance behind the camera. ``Last year there were 65 new feature films made in Brazil, which is a new record. And the audience in Brazil for Brazilian films has grown from eight percent to 21 percent. It's very exciting, and it just inspires me to keep pushing myself to do better work.''
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