The Constant Gardener

Directed by Fernando Meirelles

Despite its lacklustre title, this John le Carré adaptation is a beautifully shot exploration of the workings of big pharmaceutical companies. This is a multilayered film, part romance, part conspiracy theory, and part espionage from the director of City of God. It draws the audience in and leaves them in thoughtful appreciative silence when it ends.

The story is built around the relationship of Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) and his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz). The first scene is of the couple parting in Kenya, and this is followed soon after by a gruesome scene in which Quayle must identify his dead wife's charred body. Fiennes' mild mannered diplomat is complemented by Weisz's portrayal of Tessa as a fiery political activist whose passion leads her after Quayle to Nairobi. After her death, it becomes apparent that although he loved his wife, he never really knew her, and, paradoxically, he only comes closer to doing so after her death.

The cinematography is beautiful, with chaotic colourful scenes matched with tranquil African landscapes. The film carries a strong anticorporate antiestablishment message and, without preaching, it sends out its message clearly. All this is set against a touching tragic love story. Tessa and her fellow aid worker Arnold (Hubert Koundé) are murdered and Quayle's employers at the British High Commission are keen to paint it as a crime of passion.

Quayle is broken by the loss of his wife and channels his despair into discovering why his wife was murdered and by whom. For the first time, he takes time away from his own passion, gardening (hence the film's title) to pursue what drew Tessa to Nairobi. It becomes apparent that she was never fully honest with him as to what her activities were, as she felt that she could protect him by keeping him in the dark. He starts unravelling her work and begins to realise that she was almost single handedly investigating the unethical practices of pharmaceutical companies in Africa and that anyone who had come close to unearthing their activities was threatened or murdered.

He learns of the duplicity with which drug companies operate and the intricacy of their deceptions. He discovers that Dypraxa (an antituberculosis drug) is being tested on unsuspecting African guinea pigs who are coerced into a primitive form of “informed consent” with the threat that their health care would be revoked if they do not comply. KVH, a powerful multinational drug company, has bought Dypraxa and sold the rights to distribute it in Africa to ThreeBees, another large company based in Kenya. For the supposed two to three years that it may take for tuberculosis to become a health problem in the West, ThreeBees is to carry out its trials in Africa. KVH supposes that, by then, it can buy ThreeBees out cheaply with the prospect of untold profits for itself. The trial results are falsified, with any data indicating serious side effects or even death conveniently lost.

Taken as it is, this film is a gently paced excerpt into one couple's life and the larger issues surrounding the trialling of drugs in the developing world, particularly Africa. It tragically emphasises the different worth placed on the lives of people in different countries. You could not imagine drug trials such as these ones done in the developing world being carried out on such a scale in the developed world. It leads us to wonder as to the number of people who have little choice or autonomy at the hands of pharmaceutical companies, which act without compassion or humanity.

The developing world is an attractive place for pharmaceutical companies to trial drugs because the cost for large studies is less prohibitive, and there are fewer governmental restrictions and laws on research. Money can be used to buy silence in the government and as gifts for children, which can be given to participants who may not realise the extent to which they are being used. On the flip side, perhaps the drugs we used could never have completed their phase III if they were trialled in the developed world at the magnified costs that would entail.

Fiennes gives a moving performance as the grief stricken husband; his performance changes gear when he decides to pursue the truth and, at that point, his British stiffness gives way to a sleuth character who must hoodwink officials with false passports and lie his way to the truth. Before losing his wife, he was a constant gardener, tending to his foliage in London or Kenya. After her death, he digs behind the lies of the officials he worked for and the corporate malfeasance to get to the reality of what is happening.

The film is at times thriller and at times documentary, which makes it a moving depiction of the exploitation and poverty occurring in Kenya. There is beauty in the outdoor concert performed with bright colours and singing children in Kenya and in its sandy landscapes. The camera work captures the disparity of wealth as it swings from a tranquil manicured golf course to the slums of a shanty town where barefoot children play.

This fictional story draws on the reality of what some may deem normal practice for the pharmaceutical industry. The Constant Gardener is both visually and intellectually stimulating, leading us to question where and on whom the medicines that we give our patients each day have been trialled and at what human cost.

I am curious as to how much this story resembles reality or whether Le Carré has used artistic license to portray his view of the unethical code by which he supposes the pharmaceutical industry functions.