The Constant Gardner
It only cost £3, and I wasn’t expecting much. But Ralph Fienes delivers a great, understated performance as the High Commission official who takes on a multinational drugs company and the British Government in order to find out who killed his (unbelievably fit) wife, played by Rachel Weiss – a remarkable piece of female product design.
Penned by John Le Carre, it is unsurprising that the film is highly credible. The drugs company in the film is essentially testing a new drug product on the Kenyan population, but are unwilling to address the fact that the formula has lead to many deaths. Ralph’s fit wife starts investigating and is nastily despatched as a result.
The British government was complicit in the murder, as it turns out. But it’s not at all clear-cut – like much of Le Carre’s work. The film certainly reminds one of how governments will behave brutally towards other (especially African) nations in order to protect national interests (1500 UK jobs are secured by the drug not being re-formulated).
For a British film, it was surprisingly action packed; high-paced while being acted by very plausible characters. There was no gung-ho ending, and the film seems to have the main character’s grief threading through it – and yet as with Le Carre’s famous espionage thrillers of the seventies, the often tragic minutiae of tiny lives is interwoven with back-stabbing Whitehall weasels and an overall treacherous big brother atmosphere.
What gives Le Carre’s products his power over, say, Ian Fleming’s work, is the fact that he was actually a spy. While his specialist knowledge of security services and underhand governments might be a few decades past its best, he remains a thrilling writer with his finger firmly on the pulse corrupt western motives.
