Cinecast Mailbag (9/8)

Time for a little digging...

I just wanted to say that the constant gardener was a welcome respite from the norm and to me it seemed less a political thriller and more of a relationship movie between ralph fiennes' character and rachel weisz's. i know the movie is set in this political thriller genre involving pharmaceutical companies, but i think the problems you had with the second half of this movie are because maybe the more fiennes' character learns about his wife, the more in-your-face the message feels because it is what his wife believed and what fiennes' character needed to know to better understand her. so the message was less about telling the strife of Africa and more a man learning what kind of person his wife was. the message just played into it. maybe i'm wrong, but it felt at all times to me like a love story. anyway, i love your show, so keep doin what you're doin. --Chris

P.S. i hope this is not too old a reference for the show, but i thought "the upside of anger" was worth it for the one cool line Costner delivers toward the end after he kicks in Joan Allen's bathroom door. I won't say it, but it sums up how crazy all womankind can make a guy.

Thanks for the email, Chris. For the record, Sam and I both did watch the rest of "The Upside of Anger," and I thought the scene you reference here was one of the best in the film (not enough like it, unfortunately). We actually recorded about 5 minutes worth of discussion on "Upside" to make up for the trashing we gave the first 15 minutes, but just didn't think it fit into the show. If enough people are interested, I might make that clip available at some point.

You raise some good points about "Gardener." In fact, several listeners wrote in to defend the movie more as a love story than a political thriller. I'm willing to accept this to a point; if I recall, it was Sam who was more concerned with the thriller issue, though I too recognized the lack of suspense. For me the big issue was, as you mention, the in-your-face presentation of the message along with the potential exploitation of oppressed Africans simply to make moviegoers feel guilty. ("City of God," in contrast, really forces you to consider the plight of the impoverished without feeling like they're props on a set.) If you go to the movie's official site, the first audio clip you hear is the line, "Big pharmaceuticals... they're right up there with the arms dealers." Meirelles may have had nothing to do with the web site, of course, but it kind of shoots down the theory that this is just a love story. Maybe big pharmaceuticals are that evil and maybe they're not. I'm not interested in decrying or defending pharmaceutical companies or making any kind of lofty statements about capitalism, but this type of propagandizing -- in the context of this film, anyway -- put me off for some reason.

Listener Casey Rhodes in San Francisco articulates this quite nicely...

I felt compelled to chime in for the first time after listening to your recent review of Fernando Meirelles’ "The Constant Gardener". First of all, let me say that I do acknowledge and appreciate the raw talent and skill that Meirelles exhibits in both "City of God" and "Gardener". It's unfortunate that the level of Hollywood movies that have come out recently have forced us to be more appreciative of a director that at the very least does not resort to the lowest common denominator in order to tell his story.

That being said, I have to say that I do agree with your criticism of the movie's inability to deliver the suspence and tension that it seemed to so desperately want to convey. This is predominantly due to the director's need to force a public service announcement down our collective throats at a time when the movie should be more focused on plot, pacing, and (God forbid) storyline.

Adam