I think perhaps the most memorable thing about "The Constant Gardener" is the location shooting in Kenya, particularly in a vast Nairobi slum called Kibera, which looked to me like it might be the world's biggest shantytown. The film brings home how a Third World population like that of Kibera can be unconscionably exploited.
The hero of "The Constant Gardener" is Justin Quayle (Fiennes), a mild-mannered British diplomat working in Nairobi. He would probably have had an uneventful career with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office if he had not married Tessa (Weisz), a feisty social activist. But when Tessa is murdered within the first few minutes of the movie, Justin investigates and finds out there was much he didn't know about his late wife. He also uncovers a web of corruption involving international pharmaceutical companies and government bureaucracies.
I found the first hour of the film very compelling and the ending is strong, but the second half of the movie seemed tedious to me at times. I would say the story is good in terms of plot, setting and theme, but the characters never really came alive for me.
However, "The Constant Gardener" is pulled up a notch by excellent acting. Fiennes and Weisz have chemistry in the love story of the film's first half, and the movie features good supporting performances, particularly those of Danny Huston, Bill Nighy, Gerard McSorley and Pete Postlethwaite.
Also, Meirelles keeps the film visually interesting throughout. The locations in Kenya, England and Germany are intriguing, and the cinematography and editing are superb. Yet the movie lost much of its narrative drive for me in its second half, and I think it should have been 15 or 20 minutes shorter.
There are five bonus materials on the DVD which run a total of about 50 minutes, and although they're not great, I didn't mind spending the time to watch them. The most interesting extra for me was the one where novelist John le Carré talks about the adaptation of his book to the screen. Another bonus material I found worth watching is the extended scene of the street play in Kibera that attempts to educate the residents about AIDS.
The remaining three extras are along the lines of what we usually get on DVD's. There's a short behind-the-scenes documentary, a featurette about filming in Kenya and some deleted scenes. In one of the deleted scenes, Justin travels to Canada, where he receives some illuminating information from a pharmaceutical company employee and he witnesses a murder.
Below I've given all the details for the "Constant Gardener" DVD.
DVD Details:
Release Date: January 10, 2006
Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
Feature Film Run Time: 2 Hours 9 Minutes
MPAA Rating: R for Language, Some Violent Images and Sexual
Content/Nudity
English Dolby Digital 5.1
French Dolby Digital 5.1
English Captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Spanish Subtitles
French Subtitles
Deleted Scenes (10 min. 31 sec.)
Extended Scene: "Haruma" - Play in Kibera (9 min. 42 sec.)
Embracing Africa: Filming in Kenya (9 min. 25 sec.)
John le Carré: From Page to the Screen (8 min. 2 sec.)
Behind the Scenes of "The Constant Gardener" (11 min. 35 sec.)
