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Features
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In Gardener They Trust
For director Fernando Meirelles and star Rachel Weisz, the proudest legacy of their latest film project is something called The Constant Gardener Charitable Trust.
Monday, August 29, 2005
By Pam Grady
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Wireimage.com
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Meirelles at New York premiere
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When awards season rolls around, The Constant Gardener will most definitely be on many an Academy voter’s short list of nominees. Based on the bestselling novel by John Le Carré, this epic romantic thriller set in the diplomatic quarters and slums of Kenya boasts a riveting story, the hottest of directors in Brazilian Fernando Meirelles, and a glittering cast headed by Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes.
Although many are discussing this flashback thriller as a pre-Labor Day Weekend emissary of the fall awards season march, star Weisz and director Meirelles were equally proud during their recent discussion with FilmStew in San Francisco of The Constant Gardener Charitable Trust, an initiative undertaken by producer Simon Channing-William.
"Simon keeps going back and forth to Nairobi,” explains Meirelles. “Now he's building a school in North Kenya, in the desert near Loiyangalani. He's [also] built a couple of water tanks and bridges."
This then is no ordinary production, but one determined to leave a lasting, positive mark on the people who graciously allowed access to their neighborhoods and homes.
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Wireimage.com
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The lovely Rachel Weisz
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With the critical acclaim that greeted 2002's City of God, Meirelles’ drama about life in Brazil's slum, the favelas, the filmmaker became a director much in demand. Coincidentally, he had just returned from Kenya and was planning a different project set there when he agreed to meet with producer Channing-Williams. Initially, the 49-year-old auteur had no intention of taking on the job. His mind was percolating with ideas for the Africa-set film he envisioned and, in any case, he really didn't want to make a movie in English at this juncture in his career.
But then he read Jeffrey Caine's adaptation of LeCarré's book, in which mild-mannered British diplomat Justin Quayle (Fiennes) - a man more at home among his flowerbeds than in the web of international intrigue - throws himself headfirst into a conspiracy when his wife Tessa (Weisz) is killed and he insists on investigating her death. On one level, the tale is a simple murder mystery. On another, it is a political thriller limning the ways in which the First World exploits the Third with the residents of Kibera, Nairobi's slum area, used as guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry.
Finally, it is a love story, as Justin looks back over the life he shared with Tessa. All in all, Meirelles says he was hooked. "With the three things combined, I decided to postpone the other project and do this one," he happily confesses.
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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A return to the Oscar beat
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Weisz experienced a similar reaction to the material, although she also sees a more personal dimension in Justin's story. "One doesn't work without the other,” she observes. “The love story and the political thriller are intertwined as Justin becomes a kind of detective. [Through] this murder mystery suspense plot, he goes on a journey and discovers more about who his wife really was and comes closer, much, much closer to her and more deeply in love with her.”
"He also discovers who he really is and what he's capable of. It's extraordinary; it's a hero's journey; it's a love story and a thriller, which are completely bound up in each other. It's brilliantly structured."
Originally, the producers considered shooting in South Africa instead of on location in Kenya. There were insurance issues with Kenya, a country perceived as dangerous, and South Africa has a robust film industry and a more reliable infrastructure. But the nations are not interchangeable; the terrain, the flora, and the architecture are not the same. Even the light looks different.
Meirelles saw Kenya as a character in the movie, and Channing-Williams agreed. Eventually, Kenya prevailed and the cast and crew were confronted by the reality of Kibera.
When Meirelles shot in Rio's favelas, he thought he knew what poverty was, but Kibera forced him to reassess his assumptions. "The slums in Brazil, at least there is running water, electricity,” he says. “Most of the houses have a television, a little fridge, the minimum."
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Jim Spellman/Wireimage.com
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Benefactor Channing-Williams
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"But in Kibera, not having running water is really – I mean, this glass of fresh water, for us, we take it for granted – but this doesn't exist in Kibera,” he continues. “You don't drink clean and fresh water like this. To cook, they burn fire in their houses. Wood fires inside their houses. It's very difficult."
Weisz visited some of those homes as part of her research into Tessa, accompanying an activist much like Tessa on her rounds as she counseled women infected with HIV. But it was a day spent at a garbage dump within Nairobi itself that disturbed her. Weisz was only visiting that day as Fiennes and co-star Gerard McSorley shot their scene among the heaped trash and she saw children living there amidst the filth, sniffing glue to suppress their appetites.
"You’re just standing there and you're looking at – there are 40 little children who are glue addicts and you think how can this be?" she says. "Living like rats, literally living in a garbage dump, and you think, 'How could this happen? How could this be happening?' In the same city, there are very wealthy people."
Before Meirelles made City of God, he thought it was going to be difficult to shoot in the slums, but he spent six months prepping the film there and as he became more familiar with the place the people, his attitude altered. "All I saw was the poverty. That's all I could see in the beginning," he remembers.
"And, then through their eyes, I started to see that place the way they saw it, and it's such a much more interesting way, because they listen to music,” Meirelles adds. “There are a lot of parties, and they play. That's why when you watch City of God, it's so playful. There's a lot of jokes and people dancing, because that's the real mood, in their eyes."
He admits that the company did not spend enough time in Kibera to experience how the residents really lived and felt about their lives, but he found their attitude similar to the Brazilians. "We felt that there was good energy," he says.
When they shot in Kibera, cinematographer Cesar Charlone would trail behind as the actors interacted with the townspeople, adding elements of both realism and uncertainty. To Weisz, these moments approach reportage. "Whatever happened, happened," she explains. "You even see sometimes there are moments when people look in the lens. It's brilliant. It's breaking a rule, actually, but it's great."
| The idea was to capture that reality, as well as a sense of documentary. "Fernando was just talking about how you come in from a different culture and you see it through your eyes and then you start to see their lives through their eyes," Weisz suggests. “In a way, there's something similar about allowing them to, in a sense, represent themselves. As we walk through a slum, it wasn't Fernando or a scriptwriter giving the people of Kibera lines. On the whole, they came and represented themselves."
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"It was un-colonial, those moments," she laughs, adding soberly, "It's a tricky thing to go in there and capture on film, somebody's culture. I think the vibrancy and the life that is there, Fernando captured on camera. It sang for itself and it spoke for itself. You feel it. You see the life there and the children and their faces and their warmth and their openness. That wasn't imposing an interpretation on them that wasn't there."
Meirelles fell in love with Africa, but he admits it could be daunting filming there in the midst of what often seem like intractable problems. "My understanding of Africa changed. Sometimes when I was there, I was thinking, it's really difficult to have hope when you're there, because everywhere you look there are problems, health problems are the biggest one. When you look in a crowd and think, one of each six people has HIV, I think you re-think the whole world, the whole thing."
| The director and actress may have left Kenya, but the country is still in their hearts. They are enormously proud of the way Channing-Williams has gotten the charity up and running. In a sense, the trust really began along with the film when the company built a school and a bridge in Kibera so that something lasting would remain when the production left town. Since then, the humanitarian efforts have mushroomed.
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"It's become much more than [a school and a bridge], because we finished shooting a year ago and [Simon] keeps trying to raise money," says Meirelles. "He's really involved in this trust."
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