Tara McCormack
posted 21 November 2005

The Constant Gardener is based on the recent John Le Carre novel of the same name. It concerns Justin (Ralph Fiennes), a British diplomat who would rather be gardening, and his radical activist wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz). They first meet at a lecture he is giving on diplomacy, in response to which she stands up and rails about the war in Iraq, and the by-passing of the UN. They fall in love, and when Justin is posted to Kenya, Tessa asks to go with him. Her compassion and love for Africa are soon made clear as we are shown her lecturing a local in a shanty town about the necessity of getting an HIV test.

Tessa immediately makes a name for herself at the British diplomatic mission, as a troublemaker. When, at an Embassy do, she harangues a Kenyan minister, about missing medical supplies, and his limo, Justin is told to rein her in. Meanwhile, Tessa and an African doctor friend have discovered a heinous plot that involves a global pharmaceutical company forcing AIDS patients to sign up to test a new TB drug in order to receive their AIDS medication. Several of whom have subsequently died from the TB drugs. Tessa is murdered, and Justin begins to uncover both what Tessa discovered, and who was responsible for her (and the doctors') murder. Tessa and her doctor friend it seems had gathered some vital evidence, and were on the way to see another activist, who would have laid the whole evil plot before the UN. The person behind Tessa's murder turns out to be one of the Foreign Office mandarins (well played by Bill Nighy, who is given the only faintly amusing line in the whole film), who hired local thugs to kill Tessa and the doctor, because their exposure of the drugs company illegal testing of drugs would threaten British interests.

The plot is sufficiently preposterous that even by the film's own internal logic there is no convincing explanation for why the British government would support, let alone murder for, this illegal testing. When Justin finally asks why, he is told it is because the drugs company created 15,000 jobs in Wales. Even he is unconvinced by that, but is then given the even less persuasive answer that one of the company owners is 'one of us'.

The cinematography is stylish, and much of the story is revealed through flash-backs, as Tessa's murder happens almost at the beginning of the film. Because the film is well made this technique, which can sometimes be laboured, works well. The director, Fernando Meirelles, also made the hip but vacuous City of God. Underneath the cool camera work, and the cute kids in colourful clothes, however, the Africa of this film is the old heart of darkness, only Kurtz is missing. The Africans in the film are either saintly victims, or corrupt police and officials, or vicious 'tribesmen'. The role of Africans however is secondary, because although set in Africa, this is really a film that is about us. We stare into Africa's dark heart, and see the dark corrupt heart of Western imperialism, ruthlessly trampling Africans in order to make a profit.

John Le Carre made his name writing spy novels during the Cold War. Unlike so much of that genre his novels were complex, literary, and gripping. They evoke an era in British history that is best imagined in black and white: before chain coffee bars, and Soho was cleaned up: when MI6 agents were recruited by their dons at Oxford, rather then a website, and when the headquarters of MI6 were shrouded in secrecy (in the books, behind dirty facades in Cambridge Circus, before Les Mis and All Bar One banished the gloom). The protagonists of the novels are frequently ambiguous figures, who sometimes do not know even why they are fighting the Cold War, and could quite easily be on the other side. Since the end of the Cold War however, John Le Carre, like so many policy makers, and academics, has lost his way.

To replace the Soviet Union, Le Carre has chosen one of the favourite hobby-horses of the various groups and individuals who make up what is called the anti-globalisation movement; a big drugs company. Unlike his subtle and nuanced Cold War novels, in this story the drugs company is all bad, and Tessa is so right-on one wonders how she can stay and breathe the same corrupt air as the rest of the mere mortals. She even makes a point of giving birth in the local impoverished and overcrowded hospital.

Most striking however is just how out of touch the story is with the reality of the post-Cold War world. How quaint the idea that Tessa, with her support for Amnesty International, and her African women's groups, would be seen to be a trouble maker. Far from Tessa voicing the unspeakable, these days it is the British Government that lectures African governments about spending money on things like a modern air traffic control systems (as recently with Tanzania). And who defends big corporations these days? Not even the corporations themselves, who are busy transforming themselves into paragons of social and environmental responsibility.

In the post-Cold War world 'civil society' groups and NGOs, far from being out in the cold, are the chosen conduits for international policy in poor nations. In real life Tessa would not be 'reigned in', she would be given plenty of cash and sent off to set up a network of 'grass roots' NGOs. These days there is regular interchange of government, and international organisation workers, and NGOs such as Human Rights Watch.

Le Carre has not grasped that since the end of the Cold War, there has been a transformation in British (and Western) foreign policy. The idea of an instrumental pursuit of, or defence of, narrow national interests, has about as much relevance as the League of Nations. Western foreign policy is projected as a moral force for the defence of the 'human rights' of others, entailing strategies such as 'humanitarian intervention', human security, and state-building. 'Aid and trade' are no longer focused on the potential for profits of British firms, they have been transformed into 'poverty reduction strategies' focusing on the poorest in developing nations. Western governments have been at the forefront of these transformations, as the recent 'make poverty history' shows.

The post-Cold War world cannot be dramatized by swapping the Soviet Union for a different bogey-man. A good contemporary thriller surely needs to engage with things as they are. The film simply does not work as a thriller, being based on a simplistic conspiracy theory, and failing utterly to engage with or represent contemporary reality.