The Constant Gardener

Director Fernando Meirelles achieved acclaim for City of God (though I preferred the documentary Bus 174 as a portrait of Rio’s homeless youth), but here his swift mosaic brand of filmmaking is perfectly suited to the shattered glass worldview of John Le Carre’s novel. Fast-paced, dense and impenetrable, passionate and explosive, all-out and all-inclusive, the style suits the story. Though I felt a slight muddling of energy toward the end, and the denouement seemed implausibly underlined, this is really a marvel of visual storytelling, nonlinear, fragmented, caught on the fly in burning images. You get a sense of the overpowering realities of Africa, from the teeming streets of Nairobi to a desert refugee camp in the Sudan. Ralph Fiennes is excellent as the title character, a British diplomat, and Rachel Weisz is seductive and strong as the firebrand activist who marries him to get to Africa so she can confront the heart of darkness, which in this case is Big Pharma. This is a thriller with a brain and a heart, cannily unfolding its mysteries and puzzles, and bringing light to a hidden corner of the world’s woes. (2005, Images, n.) *8-* (MC-82, RT-82.)