***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Herbert Kounde, Bill Nighy, Pete Postlethwaite, and Danny Huston.
Directed by Fernando Meirelles & written by Jeffrey Caine, from the novel by John Le Carre
2005
129 min R
“The Constant Gardener” isn’t so much a thriller as pure cinema crossed with a thriller, or a jazz piece that occasionally riffs on the popular themes and images of a spy thriller. Director Fernando Meirelles has taken the richly-detailed collage of squalor, suffering, poverty, and deep orange dirt that was his “City of God” and expanded it to the whole continent of Africa. One after another, we visit hovels, ditches, refugee camps, dilapidated hospitals, and wastelands, until we’re numb.
Lucky for us, the movie is not a depressing slog through indigence, but an exciting piece of virtuosity from Meirelles, his cinematographer, his film editor, and his composer. He revisits his beloved shots of legs, gears, and bicycles in motion over dirt paths, but expands that to steadicam shots attached to horseflanks, all set to a hypnotic editing rhythm. These images are crossed with snapshots come to life of a broken romance: the woman getting out of the shower, the couple seeing one another across the lawn, little arguments and kissy reconciliations caught on a hand-held.
From this bubbles up a spy plot in its most abstract form: men in suits talk in oblique threats, look over their shoulders in train stations and airports, and travel to far ends of the globe only to find that someone’s waiting for them. The eponymous horticulturist (Ralph Fiennes) is a quiet member of the British embassy in Kenya. He enters a maze of double-crosses, crooked pharmaceutical companies, and general Western indifference as he investigates the murder of his activist wife (Rachel Weisz).
It takes strong performances to survive this much movie-ness; fortunately we have the likes of Danny Huston as an effeminate and cunning intelligence man, and Bill Nighy shows up to be thin-lipped and adorably detestable. Based on the novel by John Le Carre, the film obviously has an agendum, but it only gets preachy in a scene set, literally, behind a pulpit. The romance between husband and wife might not be compelling enough for the time expended on it, and “The Constant Gardener” is not as much pure fun as Boorman’s “The Tailor of Panama,” also based on Le Carre. But it is a terrific, visceral piece of virtuosity, and one of the year’s best.
Finished Saturday, October 8th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
*** (out of ****)
Starring Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Erika Christensen, and Sean Bean
Directed by Peter Schewntke & written by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray
2005
115 min PG13
I suppose how you respond to “Flightplan” depends on how much you accept the third act. When what was hidden is finally revealed, you may find it unlikely, but it is thematically consistent: stylistically, “Flightplan” is as cold, impersonal, commercial, and efficient as we want our airports and taxis to be. A recently-widowed engineer (Jodie Foster) returns to America with her daughter and her husband’s casket. Then, in mid-flight, her daughter vanishes, and no one onboard remembers seeing her, or can even find her name on the manifest. The allure of the first two acts is the mounting oddness and discomfort, and the widow even draws a couple of Middle Eastern passengers into her hysteria (notice who gets an apology at the end of the film and who doesn’t).
The other passengers are vaguely bland and pie-faced. Even the women who aren’t stewardesses seem to be in the service & hospitality industries. The men aren’t very manly, especially Peter Sarsgaard’s passenger, who’s like a cross between Malkovich and Philip Seymour Hoffmann. The exception is the captain (Sean Bean), who is portrayed with the patient, paternal ease with authority that’s usually reserved, in movies, for doctors and priests.
The movie essentially takes a page from Hitchcock or De Palma and asks, would you rather be insane, or would you rather the world be insane, or does it even make a difference? “Flightplan’s” attention to “things”—floorplans, doorknobs, seat cushions, coats, all patiently shown from different angles—is certainly Hitchcockian, although Hitchcock would have been even more meticulous. But then we come back to theme: a Hitchcock or a De Palma would have probably put a more personal touch on this project, but it needs to be indifferent. “Flightplan” is polite and smiling as it hands you your boarding pass, and robotically confused in the face of the mother’s growing hysterics. The scare isn’t so much that someone’s out to get you as much as it’s about no one caring either way.
Back to home.