Digging in the dirt

The Constant Gardener (2005)
Focus Features presents a Fernando Meirelles film, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Written by Jeffrey Caine, from a novel by John Le Carré. 129 mins. R for language, some violent images and sexual content.

3.5 stars

Although the settings and major players were decidedly different, there was something eerily familiar about the main thrust of “The Constant Gardener,” an intrigue film pregnant with corporate malice.

Novelist John Le Carré displayed truly prescient inklings with the thriller he fashioned in 2001; the film adaptation also received an unanticipated relevance when an astounding $253.4 million verdict was rendered last month against Merck, the maker of a previously popular painkiller Vioxx.

Texas jurors sent a clear message to the company: Americans shouldn’t be sold a drug that clinical trials proved to be a serious health liability.

Bringing a pharmaceutical conglomerate’s wrongdoing to light is the prime catalyst, too, for the strong-minded Tessa (Rachel Weisz). In fact, Tessa’s outspokenness is what attracted to the considerably more reserved Justin (Ralph Fiennes). Their affair is torrid and unmistakably brief. It culminates, as couplings between career-driven women and highly-connected men often do, in a marriage showered in mutual opportunity as much as love.

The film begins its non-linear narrative with Tessa’s death. Out in the far reach of an African plain, she looks to be target of a coordinated assassination effort by an unknown force. The collateral damage in the truck hit is Dr. Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Koundé), a native whose is suspected of assisting Tessa in the active cuckolding of her husband.

Incensed by the absurdity of her murder, Justin begins his obsession to uncover Tessa’s myriad of secrets - both about their marriage and of her work exposing injustice. The chronology of events unfolds forwards and backwards, catching opinionated audiences in constant states of flux. As soon as we begin to believe something conclusively, we’re presented additional bits of evidence that can alter our understanding considerably. It’s a challenge rarely offered from films these days; we’re usually force-fed a calculated set of feelings within the first 20 minutes.

What we think we believe without hesitation is that a major British pharmaceutical company may be rigging trials of its soon to be approved drug and using Africans as human guinea pigs. As a diplomat inextricably linked with the British High Commission, Justin is granted access not offered to regular peons. The more clues he uncovers - on either front of his investigation - the more the commission and his friends begin initiating lockdown.

As the search grows more helpless, the camera work presented by cinematographer César Charlone and director Fernando Meirelles reflects these new dire straits. The pair teamed together on the brilliant adaptation, “City of God,” which married multiple perspectives with frantic, often hand-held work.

“The Constant Gardener” is cognizant of its more formal setting, but still employs a significant amount of hand-held shots to accentuate evolving tension or conflict. In color tone, feel and warmth, “The Constant Gardener” is brethren to Steven Soderbergh’s “Traffic,” using different accents to heighten moods. The colors of Africa in the pre-investigation days are vibrant, with light flooding many plains. By the time Justin’s query has reached England, a luncheon with the influential Sir Bernard Pellegrin (Bill Nighy) is muted in several shades of gray.

The overall tone of the film is somber, as “The Constant Gardener” revels in showing us a marriage in which both parties assume the other is not content. As much as Justin continues the work of his late wife, the film’s true purpose is revealing Tessa’s often complicated, but unconditional, love for her husband.

One final note: Focus Features has continued to prove its worth as the top distributor of small market, niche films of spectacular intelligence. It can claim credit over the following films: “21 Grams” (4 stars, #9 on my 2003 list), “The Door in the Floor” (3 stars), “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (4.5 stars and #1 for 2004), “Far From Heaven” (4.5 stars, #5 on 2002 list), “Lost in Translation” (3.5 stars, #10 on 2003 list), “The Motorcycle Diaries” (3.5 stars), “The Pianist” (5 stars and #1 for 2002) and “Swimming Pool” (3 stars). I expect similar greatness from this December’s “Brokeback Mountain.”

A dirty joke done right

The Aristocrats (2005)
Directed by Paul Provenza. 89 mins. Not rated.

3 stars

Call it growing up in the age of rampant sex and violence, but there’s little that makes me squeamish at the movie theater. “The Aristocrats,” a documentary about a dirty joke’s etymology, seriously challenged my blasé disposition.

The joke itself merits a documentary’s worth of discussion. So I don’t lose you to the stacks, here’s an approximate form:
A man walks into a talent agency and pitches a family act. In his description, he tells of various scatological, incestuous, bestial and sadomasochistic routines, all performed by the family.

After hearing of these unspeakable acts, the agent says, “That’s one heck of an act. What do you call it?”

The man replies, “The Aristocrats!”

Since the film seems to be the inspiration of Teller’s cohort, Penn Jillette, and outfitted with the nation’s best comedic talents, the audience is never quite sure what in this documentary is fact-based and what’s a litmus test of our gullibility.

We’re told only this: “The Aristocrats” officially appears in an anthology of dirty jokes and its various forms are at the complete mercy of the comedian.

The film suggests that the joke provides a peek into the dark, disturbingly perverted reaches of a comedian’s soul by what grotesque descriptions of sex, violence and biological functions are added or emphasized.

When the documentary starts to get too full of itself, it unleashes an avalanche of humorists, each providing their own frank recountings of the joke. Many, like New Yorkers George Carlin and Paul Reiser, attempt to improvise the joke. The result is a worthy mixture of groans and guffaws, usually with additional laughs for any blown endings or tangents into nowhere.

Some comics actually afford the documentary’s its inherent legitimacy, like Phyllis Diller and Don Rickles. Still others, like Robin Williams and Lewis Black, are just looking for a quick goof and seem rather uninterested in joke or the documentary that it catalyzed.

Much is made of the testosterone-fueled descriptions that plague a good telling of “The Aristocrats,” so it’s surprising that the film’s biggest scene stealer is Sarah Silverman, the decidedly un-PC New Englander.

She gives the inquiry a mock seriousness, placing herself in “The Aristocrats” story, as if she were once part of a family that would subject itself to such depravities. The payoff is too involved and too precious to ruin here; let’s just say laughing at it tells us perhaps more about ourselves than the person telling it.

Fear factor, in flight

Red Eye (2005)
Dreamworks Pictures presents a Wes Craven film, starring Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy. Written by Carl Ellsworth. 85m. Rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of violence and language.

2.5 stars

Irish-born Cillian Murphy is a professional disarming agent.

That trace of a lilt, those unassuming blue eyes, a scruffy surfer cut. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who is running middle management in a hit job.

That’s why “Red Eye” worked. One minute Jackson (Murphy) is waxing poetic about God’s beautiful creation, the Tex Mex. The next, he’s telling Lisa (Rachel McAdams) that someone is going home in a bodybag.

“Red Eye” is certainly not the first film to inject the claustrophobia of coach class with the taut, suspense-laden script (next month’s Jodie Foster-vehicle, “Flightplan,” looks to take similar strides). But it preys violently on our feelings of helplessness while navigating the skies at 30,000 feet.

Perhaps more villainous is that Jackson actually has the gall to seduce his mark in one of the few places that random interactions with strangers is actually encouraged (also see last month’s “Wedding Crashers”). We’re impressed that he’s able to guess her drink of choice and that he’s pleasantly chatty about her family. But my neck tingled a bit when he informs us that all the interaction was intelligence-gathering, at least for this late night jaunt from Dallas to Miami. “Red Eye” turns on a dime, giving you no sense - unless you peeked at the trailer - that it would be playing out as anything but a paint-by-numbers rom-com.

We learn that the pre-flight flirting was a crude self-evaluation for Jackson, who reveals that he’s been stalking the front desk manager and making copious notes about the inanities of her life. He seems genuinely irritated by her rebuff of a Sea Breeze, for example, because that was what all of his late night surveillance told him. It’s guys, like Jackson, who pay attention to the little details that should be calling the shots of this entire operation.

But Jackson is part of an faction whose motives are entirely unclear, except that their target is homeland security czar Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia). I appreciate that the plot eschews the minutiae of Jackson’s group. Are they extremists? Vigilant anti-war types? The question, as horror wizard Wes Craven has figured out, is: Does it really matter, considering where the true tension lies?

Lisa is offered a quasi-Catch 22 by her seatmate in the 18th row. As matron of a luxurious Florida hotel/hotspot, she can make the call to switch Keefe to a more assassin-friendly suite. If she is non-compliant, Jackson will ensure her doting father (Brian Cox) will meet the wrong end of a switch blade.

Ladies and gentlemen, your new question is: How does Lisa solve the riddle that is getting her way on both accounts? Aye, there’s the rub, or the climax of this compact thrillerette.