After numerous recommendations, I saw The Constant Gardener a few weeks ago and at the time contemplated writing about it. But I didn't and had pretty much forgotten about it until I saw a piece by Saul Landau about it in CounterPunch. That re-inspired my urge to rant, especially because I feel Landau, and many others in their praise, missed a whole lot.
I'll concede that there's a good message that pharmaceutical companies and imperialists are murderous and greedy. But having one good message does not make it a good film. Also important to consider are the other messages conveyed by the film.
For one, and perhaps this is personal taste, but I feel that fiction in general makes for a much less powerful film. There are plenty of examples of pharmaceutical companies doing horrible things - if they wanted to take on the industry, why not use a real occurrence in order to drive home the fact that things like this actually happen. Fiction lets viewers off the hook, less compelled to act by what they saw. And really, who likes drug manufacturers anyway? Talk about an easy target.
This is compounded by the fact that the end was textbook Hollywood. In dramatic fashion, the evildoers are revealed and the good guys more or less win. (Off topic: Who just gives up and lets himself be killed? Weak.) So not only is it just fiction, but when it comes down to it, justice prevails. Phew...wouldn't want the $10 I spent to keep me up at night.
Those are side issues compared to my main qualm with the film, which simply is that it's racist. Granted, it is adapted from a novel by John Le Carre, who according to Landau is a "world class outraged anti-imperialist." I don't know about that. If he is, he's certainly a might eurocentric anti-imperialist, which should make one question his anti-imperialist credentials.
It baffles my mind how a movie sent in Kenya, about injustices being committed against Africans, can have almost no African characters of any significance. The most important character of color is Arnold, but he dies quickly and on top of that is in the closet (an effort to display "African backwardness"?). The rest of the African characters are either corrupt or helpless and anonymous. A much better review noted,
[T]here was something disgusting in believing that self-righteous
European elites and local elites would be the sole actors in the film,
reducing a poverty stricken populace to a position of voiceless animals
being led to slaughter.
I couldn't agree more. This movie was just another version of "Whitey to the Rescue!" Why did the Kenyans needs Tessa and then John (and of course a German non-profit) to figure out what was going on and expose it? At every turn in the movie there's a white face to explain what is happening to the local population. For crying out loud, there's even a white preacher in Darfur to talk to our white savior John! This effectively removes all agency from the indigenous people and turns them into nothing more than "voiceless animals" to be acted upon by the good and bad guys. The only time it seems the Africans regain their voices is to commit
offenses against the main characters. Kenyan officials, police and
doctors are corrupt and teenagers will murder people for you if you get them
drunk.
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