Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

In the 2005 adaptation of John Le Carré's muckraking novel The Constant Gardener, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles and cinematographer Cesar Charlone shot the shantytown of Nairobi (and a range of other locales) like the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in their much-lauded 2002 movie "City of God." (and the 2002-2005 tv series "City of Men" that IFC shows).

As Justin Quayle, Ralph Fiennes suffers some more (yes, he does it well, having had a whole lot of practice) and (less usually) is stirred to action after the murder of his beloved wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz in a part for which she won a best supporting actress even though she is the female lead and almost the only female character). Well, nominally it was an automobile accident, though she was raped and mutilated. Rape and genital mutilation are not generally part of automobile "accidents," but "there are no murders in Africa, only regrettable deaths," Quayle is told. Later there is what is officially ruled a "suicide" with a corpse containing bullets from three guns, but none from the one he was holding. (And Tessa's is not the grisliest murder in the story...)

I don't think that it is a secret that the nefarious conduct of clinical trials in Africa by multinational pharmaceutical companies is the muck Le Carré's best-selling book raked. That the governments of the former colony and the "home" (colonizing) country are implicated in covering up dubious activities by that profits are linked to murders that are officially sanctioned in London and in Nairobi.

The movie's editing seems to be to be unnecessarily jagged, but I soon was able to sort out the chronology of the flashbacks and the transformation of the ever-so polite low-level British diplomat (Fiennes) pulled out of his garden (the title is a Candide allusion, I'm sure, as Justin Quayle increasingly realizes he is not in the best of all possible worlds). As a "thriller," the movie takes its time getting going, but Le Carré is not your typical "thriller" writer. He has a more despairing and a more political view than many purveyors of thrills and chills (and explosions and other forms of on-screen violence).

BTW, the movie had turned a profit before Weisz snagged an Oscar.

The DVD bonus features have considerable overlap with each other. The best is the one that focuses on Le Carré, who pronounces himself more satisfied with the adaptation than of any of the other (many!) screen adaptations of his novels. (I'll stick with the one of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" for that accolade, while wishing that "The Little Drummer Girl" was both a better movie and that the book on which it was based was read more these days, as it is even more relevant than "The Constant Gardener" is.) Also notable is that, in the interviews for bonus features, Ralph Fiennes has a smile other than the pained one he usually delivers in movies.

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The less-acclaimed (I think underappreciated) movie in this twin-pack also involves a white woman involved with a very corrupt black African regime. The title character in "The Interpreter," Silvia Broome, played by Nicole Kidman, grew up in intimacy with anti-colonial mobilization in Africa. The fictional country of Maboto seems to me primarily a version of Zimbabwe, formerly Southern Rhodesia. For someone of the age of Broome/Kidman to have felt herself to be African and to have been a young participant in overturning white role, the country has to have been in Southern Africa, and in that Broome/Kidman does not seem to be of Portuguese ancestry or mother-tongue, Zimbabwe is the obvious inspiration.

There is no lack of African states in which a hero of the anti-colonial struggle turned into a despot unwilling to relinquish power. (Nelson Mandela is exceptional in many ways!). In Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe supplies the sinews of Dr. Zuwanie (Earl Cameron), whose hold on power has been based on increasing violence against opponents. Like Mugabe going to London, Zuwanie plans to go the New York to address the General Assembly of the United Nations and bewitch listeners into seeing him as fighting terror rather than organizing state terrorism.

Fluent in several languages (French and "Ku" among them (the latter is a Bantu-based language made up for the movie)), Silvia Broome has been committed to avoiding misunderstandings in her work as a simultaneous interpreter at the United Nations. One night, retrieving something from her translator booth, she overhears what sounds like plans to assassinate Zuwanie when he comes to make his case that he is a victim of terrorists rather than an instigator of them.

Protecting visiting heads of state is (at least in the movie) a responsibility for the Secret Service. The pair of seasoned agents that Pollack (playing a senior Secret Service official within the movie) assigns to investigating whether there is a credible threat are Tobin Keller and Dot Woods, enacted by Sean Penn and Catherine Keener.

For them (and, no doubt, for many viewers) it is very difficult to figure out what is going on, in particular to figure out whether Sylvie Broome is part of a conspiracy to assassinate the president of her native land or sending them on a wild emu chase... or is in danger for what she heard and reported. The last of these three hypotheses becomes increasingly credible as events unfold in the days before Zuwanie's scheduled visit. Leading anti-Zuwanie activists living in New York are killed (not to mention the "collateral damage"). Zuwanie has many enemies, and also has operatives, including a white chief of security a seeming Boer mercenary named Nils Lud (Jesper Christensen).

Although I would categorize the movie as more character-driven than plot-driven, there is a lot of plot for Keller to sort through, as he learns more about Broome's background. I thought the movie had a great payoff involving African taboos about speaking the names of the dead and customary law that Broome had earlier explained to Keller. The "thriller" plot is also deeply insidious (requiring a degree of unscrupulousness that would have been unbelievable to Americans before Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Karl Rove, but no longer seemsw "paranoid").

I agree with Phungusand others that there is not erotic chemistry between Kidman and Penn. Those expecting a Pollack romance film like "The Way We Were" or "Out of Africa" or "Tootsie" will be disappointed. But it seems to me that Sean Penn is not a romantic comedy star and that his movies have not had much in the way of erotic chemistry with the female leads (a perverse exception of sorts was in "Dead Man Walking"). He may be there and sympathetic (Up at the Villa, At Close Range) or abusive (Sweet and Lowdown), but Cary Grant he is not (the UN setting triggers resonances of Grant trying to figure out what side Eva Mare Saint is on in "North by Northwest"). Penn does anguish, and does it well here.

Similarly, it seems to me that with the exception (a major one!) of "Moulin Rouge" Kidman has not had much erotic chemistry with her costars, more often tormenting them (To Die For, Billy Bathgate, Portrait of a Lady, Eyes Wide Shut, The Hours, I haven't seen "The Human Stain"). It seems to me that a male character and a female character can connect on some levels, care about each other, and not have any chance of living happily ever after together. (I'd apply this to Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes in another 2005 paranoid thriller set in Africa, "The Constant Gardener"). Keller and Broome are deeply traumatized by recent losses and don't hop into bed for sexual healing. That seems such an absurd expectation that I don't even think that specifying it constitutes "plot spoiling." They have very demanding jobs to do on a large geopolitical canvas and are credible as professionals. (She listens, he watches: this does not bode well for romantic connection!)

The movie is very good at showing people doing difficult jobs requiring split-second judgments. Shooting on location within the UN edifice (the first time this has been permitted) gives the movie a documentary feeling and a rosy romantic ending does not seem a requisite— I was ready to watch adults who had survived great disappointments and for whom overcoming debilitating grief was more important than finding a romantic partner.

"The Interpreter" is a great police procedural, a rare exploration of post-colonial African dysfunction, and a rare Hollywood film focused on a troubled intelligent woman. (The companion piece, "A Constant Gardener" is another, but beyond them, what else?)

I could question the editing (indeed, the construction), the underutilization of Keener, and the usual need for a white hero or heroine ("Hotel Rwanda" and The Wilby Conspiracy are rare exceptions), but with so much carping about the movie already posted in epinions, I want to focus on the fine acting and the portrayal of the far-reaching regimes of terror that Mugabe et al. have wrought and the lengths to which those with power will go to hold onto it.

© 2007, Stephen O. Murray



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD