The Constant Gardener

I watched this last night on DVD.

Whenever possible I buy the full–screen edition of a movie so as to avoid the black bars above and below.

True — that's not the way the director wanted it to be seen but hey, that's life.

I'll keep doing it until the first company to take my invention into production offers me a cinemaTV™.

A quiet, meditative movie for the most part, sort of like "Syriana" in that it takes an explosive topic and mutes it under nuance and dialogue instead of explosions and all.

And we get to visit Africa, the gritty, vibrant continent that one day, someday, will rise from its wreckage like a phoenix.

I read le Carré's novel a couple years ago and as best I recall it was quite different in terms of details from the film though the Mcguffin (as it were) — big pharma's using the wretched of the earth as a testing ground for drugs not yet ready for prime time/First World evaluation because of rather nasty side effects such as death — remains the same.

Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz occupy the screen about 90% of the time which is just fine because both are wonderful actors.

A most enjoyable 129 minutes indeed for my $17.99.

The final credits go on forever and are wonderful.

The music is superb as they scroll by.

After a while I started counting people and I would bet there were over 1,000 names listed in the credits: just the drivers at all the different locations numbered in the hundreds.

What an amazing, impossible thing it is to produce a major motion picture.

I cannot imagine doing such a thing, on such a grand scale and involving the coordination of so many people, places and things.

Truly a minor miracle of present–day life.

FunFacts: Weisz is pronounced "vice" and Ralph is pronounced "rayph."