"The Constant Gardener" by John LeCarre
Posted by Max Dunn Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:32:00 GMT
It isn’t often that a movie about a book is very good. After all, most books are comprised of 6 to 16 hours of text, so cutting it down to a 2 hour movie often cuts out the heart of the book. It is rarer still that a movie is better than the book, but I think this is the case with The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre.
I have always loved a good spy thriller. Starting with Robert Ludlum, I moved through this genre and ended up with Le Carre being my favorite. While LeCarre was not always as enthralling as the others, his writing skills were far-and-away the best. When I finished reading a Le Carre, I felt as if I had actually read something worthwhile and would remember and revisit the story in my mind. So it is not as if I don’t like Le Carre and prefer movies instead. But in this case, I really think the movie was better.
SPOILER ALERT
In particular, the beautifully haunting pictures of Africa were able to depict the majestic suffering and poverty of that region much better than the book was able to. We could really see why Tessa was so moved by the plight of the Africans and willing to risk her life for them.
A mystifying aspect of the book is that it didn’t really elaborate much on Quayle’s “constant” gardening. Except for a few times when it was mentioned in passing, he didn’t do much actual gardening in the book. But in the movie, he was constantly shown gardening. Of course after Tessa’s death, he becomes a gardener of a different sort: in essence a gardener of Africa trying to weed out the bad pharmaceuticals so maybe Le Carre was concentrating more on that aspect of his gardening.
Another scene in the movie that was an improvement over the book was when Quayle sneaks back into Kenya and confronts Woodrow. Woodrow succinctly fills in a lot of missing information that was spread out hodge-podge in the book. Also in the movie, unlike the book, Quayle gives the incriminating love note back to Woodrow signalling that Quayle was intent only on finding out the truth and carrying out Tessa’s work, and not in carrying out a vendata against Woodrow.
Of course for American audiences that like to see the good guys win and have a nice, neat ending, the movie version in which Ham reads Pelligrin’s incriminating note at Quayles memorial was much more satisfying than the book which let the bad guys slide away with their crimes.
But the scene I like the best in the movie was when Quayle goes to lake Turkana where Tessa died, knowning that his killers would find him there. The beautiful imagery, and Quayle’s solitude accompanied only by his visions of Tessa was eerily powerful. Then we see the him unload the bullets from his gun, we know exactly and the killers approach. Even though all we see are the birds on the lake startle, and take to flight, we know exactly what happened.
Seeing the movie first, I liked it so much that I got the book hoping that it would paint a richer tapestry of the story. However, while there was more complexity in the book, I didn’t feel that it really added that much at all and certainly didn’t surpass the tremendous beauty and emotional impact of the movie.
So for me, this is one of those rare cases where the movie was actually better than the book.