The Constant Gardner

Constant Gardner.
Written by James Wall.

Constant Gardner was a powerful movie about corruption, politics and miss-use of a third world country.

The first fantastic point I’d like to mention about the Constant Gardner is its narrative, the story is told in an unusual way. Once we get past the introduction of the characters the film shows us an important incident. Then the story splits into two timelines. The two timelines start at different points, one being of how the incident happened and the other being how the incident is investigated. The film switches between the two as we learn more. I believe this helps to portray how unexpected the incident is to the main character (Ralph Fiennes) and also shows us how scattered and confused this mind is.

This dual timeline doesn’t last the whole film and the two meet about halfway through, which makes the story back to a linier timeline. I personally would have liked that style of story telling to have lasted longer. It made what could have been a long drawn out drama very interesting. I also felt it made me (the audience) feel closer to the film, as if I was investigating the mystery with him.

I thought the use of camerawork was good. In certain scenes the camera wasn’t traditionally set straight on a tripod. It was wobbly, handheld, like it was in first person view. Again this made me feel apart of the action.

The acting was ok, but nothing better than I have already seen. The stand out performance for me was from Pete Postlethwaite. He wasn’t in the film long, which was a shame. But, if I had never seen Poslethwaite before I wouldn’t have realised he was putting on an accent. Ralph Fiennes was good, but I have seen him playing the “English gent” too many times. It was refreshing seeing him earlier in the year completely out of character in “In Bruges,” were he played a-double-hard-cockney-bastard and he blew me away.

The use of colour and scenery was really nice, helping with the story. The use of de-saturating the scene leading up to the incident helped the viewer realise these scenes were in the past. The long shots of the deserts showed us how isolated and alone Fiennes was. Nobody seemed to want to help him without a push.

I did feel there was an over use of showing starving African children. Sometimes it felt like a red nose day commercial. It seemed like a cheap shot to make the movie more hard hitting and it didn’t need it.

I give The Constant Gardner a James Wall rating of 8/10.