I can’t believe it is the end of the 2000’s.  In fact, it didn’t really hit me until I started seeing all sorts of lists posted online– “Best Books of the Decade,” “Most Influential Leaders of the Decade,” “Worst Hair Styles of the Decade,” “Biggest Celebrity Nudity Scandals of the Decade,” you know.

So, to honor this fabulous decade, I’ve decided to compile a list of the Top 10 Films of the Decade… but since I’m so indecisive, it ended up being the Top 10 Films of the Decade……. With 12 Honorable Mentions.

The ranking is a combination of how influential the film was and also how much I like it.  Really, all of them deserve to be #1, but for the sake of this blog, I’ve ranked them… Here we go:

10.  Shrek

2001, Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, Winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

9.  No Country For Old Men

2007, Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, Winner of 4 Academy Awards: Best Directing, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), Best Adapted Screenplay

8.  Crash

2004, Directed by Paul Haggis, Winner of 3 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay

7.  WALL-E

2008, Directed by Andrew Stanton, Winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

6.  Love Actually

2003, Directed by Richard Curtis, Nominated for 2 Golden Globes

5.  Hotel Rwanda

2004, Directed by Terry George, Nominated for 3 Academy Awards

4.  Ocean’s Eleven

2001, Directed by Steven Soderbergh

3.  Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

2003, Directed by Gore Verbinski, Nominated for 5 Academy Awards

2.  Slumdog Millionaire

2008, Directed by Danny Boyle, Winner of 8 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Original Song and Best Adapted Screenplay; Also nominated for another Best Original Song and Best Sound Editing

1.  Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Won 4 Academy Awards: Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Make Up, Best Original Score; Nominated for 13 Academy Awards in total

The Two Towers (2002), Won 2 Academy Awards: Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects, Nominated for 6 Academy Awards in total

The Return of the King (2003), Won 11 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Best Make Up, Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Sound Mixing

In total: Won 17 Academy Awards & Nominated for 19 More

Directed by Peter Jackson

Unfortunately, WordPress requires that more than a certain number of pictures be put in a gallery… so I can’t post them after each title.  But you get the idea.

Honorable Mentions (Alphabetically)

Atonement, 2007

Children of Men, 2006

The Constant Gardener, 2005

The Dark Knight, 2008

The Departed, 2006

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004

The Fountain, 2006

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth), 2006

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), 2006

The Prestige, 2006

Signs, 2002

Y Tú Mamá También, 2001

So…………  If I hosted an award show for the decade, these would be the winners, based on how many times they appear in the 22 Aforementioned Films:

Best Director: Peter Jackson (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King)

Runner-Up Best Directors: [Tie] Christopher Nolan (The Prestige and The Dark Knight) and Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men and Y Tú Mamá También)

Best Cinematographer: [Tie] Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men and WALL-E) and Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men and Y Tú Mamá También)

Best Actor: Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Ocean’s Eleven, Crash)

Runner-Up Best Actor: Michael Caine (The Prestige, Children of Men, The Dark Knight)

Best Actress: Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean, Love Actually, Atonement)

Runner-Up Best Actress: Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener, The Fountain)

Of course… this isn’t necessarily who I would pick… it is just based on the Top 10/12 Lists.

That’s all for now…. check back later this week for more “Best _____ of the Decade Lists!”

This list wasn’t as hard to compile as I thought it would be.  When I go to the movies, after I’m sitting there watching the credit, I decide then and there whether I’m going to buy it when it comes out on DVD. I don’t know if anyone shares the same sensation but after I see a movie I absolutely love, I look forward to owning.  Not necessarily to watch again (although that’s part of it) but to be able to share the movie with friends who haven’t seen it so they can love the movie too and we’ll have that in common (or they can hate it and it will always be a blemish on their permanent friendship record). So I looked at all the movies that came out in the 2000s and looked for the ones I owned and that made it easy*.  I also tried to put them in order of best to least best.  Honestly, the only numbers that matter is 1-15. After that it gets pretty interchangeable.

If I ever wrote anything on my blog about the movie, there’s a link to it.

50. The Fountain
49. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
48. Away From Her
47. Casino Royale
46. Up
45. Tropic Thunder
44. The Hangover
43. Little Miss Sunshine
42. The Way of the Gun
41. The Prestige
40. American Psycho
39. The Bourne Ultimatum
38. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
37. 28 Days Later
36. Raising Victor Vargas
35. Thank You For Smoking
34. Snatch
33. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
32. Lars & The Real Girl
31. The Constant Gardener
30. Old School
29. Shaun of the Dead
28. The Departed
27. Spider-Man 2
26. Best In Show
25. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
24. Finding Nemo
23. Love & Basketball
22. In the Mood for Love
21. X2: X-Men United
20. The Incredibles
19. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
18. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
17. Spirited Away
16. The Royal Tenenbaums
15. Kill Bill Vol. 1
14. Almost Famous
13. Once
12. Oldboy
11. High Fidelity
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
9. Love Actually
8. Brokeback Mountain
7. Pan’s Labyrinth
6. The Dark Knight
5. WALL-E
4. Memento
3. Children of Men
2. Before Sunset
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Jueves/ “El jardinero fiel” dirigida por Fernando Meirelles

“Fernando Meirelles, nominado a un Oscar por la película Ciudad de Dios, dirige este nuevo y fascinante largometraje que cuenta el viaje emocional y político de un hombre, que le lleva a descubrir la verdad escondida detrás de la pérdida de un ser querido y de una conspiración internacional.“

Extraído de La Higuera.

Ver además:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_jardinero_fiel_(pel%C3%ADcula)

http://www.cineismo.com/criticas/jardinero-fiel-el.htm

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387131/

Los títulos seleccionados  son una muestra de los materiales actualmente en préstamo de los fondos de la Biblioteca del Instituto Internacional.

Si te interesa ver o leer ésta recomendación puedes consultar su disponibilidad en el catálogo la biblioteca del IIE.

El jardinero fiel = The constant gardener. [DVD] / directed by Fernando Meirelles. — Barcelona : RBA, [2005]. — 1 DVD (123 min.) : son., col. + libreto 64 p. — (Speak Up).

Idiomas : español, inglés, subtít. : español, inglés

Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz

D.L. B 24775-1985

ZW .M44 C6618 2005

This week’s “F.I.L.M.” (First-Class, Independent Little-Known Movie) is one that I fully believe has the power to change the world.  ”The Constant Gardener” is so emotionally compelling that it can force you to question every opinion you have about helping those in poverty.  I have seen firsthand the poorest people in our hemisphere during a mission trip to Nicaragua this summer, but this movie hit me at nearly the same level.  Director Fernando Mierelles (“City of God”) doesn’t treat their indigence as some sort of spectacle.  He treats them with humanity, willing to feature them as real people with hearts and feelings just like the diplomat played by Ralph Fiennes.  Mierelles almost does for the poor in movies what Dickens did for the poor with literature.

“The Constant Gardener” gained some prestige from Rachel Weisz’s Oscar win for Best Supporting Actress, an award that she unquestionably deserved.  But don’t be fooled by the word “supporting.”  She may not have a great deal of screen time, but the character Tessa, who she plays with brilliance and compassion, is the dominant focus of the movie.  Tessa is a crusader for justice investigating a pharmaceutical company using the destitute in Africa as guinea pigs but possibly treating them like flies, unafraid to alter results of their tests for the betterment of their company.  Her inquiry into the potentially corrupt dealings of the corporations leads her into dangerous territory, unwittingly drawing her husband, Justin (Fiennes), into the fray.  What ensues is a startling portrayal of the consequences of one man trying to do the right thing for the people who don’t have aren’t given a voice.

While “The Constant Gardener” may not exhibit Mierelles’ directorial prowess quite like “City of God,” it is still a breathtaking achievement.  It is unlike most political thrillers, which are usually entangled in plot twists, and conveys a simple story with huge moral implications.  The movie will make you cry for its content, but on a grander level, it will make you weep for the people that Justin and Tessa try to defend.  How much is one life worth?  How far would you go to save a life?  Should help be given to the individual or the group?  ”The Constant Gardener” grapples with those questions, but ultimately leaves you to ponder how you feel about the issues.

Intrebare: ce au in comun Monica Anastase (din Improvisneyland) si Rachel Weisz (Oscar pentru The Constant Gardener in 2006)?

Raspuns: lucreaza impreuna la The Whistleblower, in regia Larysei Kondracki. Filmarile au inceput de aproximativ o saptamana iar Monica a fost aleasa dintre un numar impresionant de candidati sa fie asistenta personala a lui Rachel!

Ne bucuram pentru ea si ii tinem pumnii, in acelasi timp insa trupa ii va simti lipsa pentru o luna intreaga de acum incolo!  Te pupam Monica!!! (fetele, baietii iti trimit salutari de la distanta )

a couple of my favorite lines from one of my favorite films.

—

on the pharmaceutical industry testing drugs in Africa:

“No, there are no murders in Africa. Only regrettable deaths.

And from those deaths we derive the benefits of civilization,

benefits we can afford so easily… because those lives were bought so cheaply.”

to sum it up, and i quote:

“This is how the world fucks Africa”

'Johnny Mad Dog'

Here’s a little pub quiz question for you: which country has the second largest film industry in the world?

If you answered the US, China, India or France then YOU WRONG, as they used to say on Banzai!. You very wrong indeed. In terms of the number of films produced every year, it is the Nigerian industry that holds this accolade, its annual production of 2000-odd features surpassed only by the might of Bollywood.

And yet I’ve never seen a Nigerian film, and I’m willing to bet that you haven’t either. ‘Nollywood’ films are produced predominantly for the local market, where they go straight to DVD and outsell the Hollywood competition by ten-to-one.

The Africa that we outsiders normally see in the cinema is very different. In films like The Last King of Scotland, The Constant Gardener and Shooting Dogs, Africa is a place where white foreigners venture at their peril; a place where they encounter the raw savagery of nature firsthand and uncover a dark, corrupt, hitherto-unknown side to themselves. Even in the best of these films, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the continent and its people are nothing more than an exotic backdrop to this process of self-discovery. 

So it’s refreshing when, just occasionally, a film about Africans themselves makes it onto screens around the world. One such film is Johnny Mad Dog, the story of a band of brutalised child soldiers, which is released in the UK this week. Set in an unnamed West African country, the film stars a group of real-life former child soldiers as the eponymous hero and his gang. Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s frantic, high-octane approach has left festival audiences shaken and has earned comparisons with Brazil’s City of God.

At the other end of the continent, films from South Africa have been punching above their weight recently too. This year’s District 9 was an alien adventure movie that, in theory, could have been made in New York or London or Sydney. But, as it happens, it was made in Johannesburg, with the Apartheid-era parallels in its story of an alien ghetto played up to maximum effect. Along with films like Bunny Chow (2006) and the Oscar-winning Tsotsi (2005), District 9 testifies to the growing confidence of the South African industry and its ability to make movies for an international audience.

'District 9'

Elsewhere in Africa you might need to look a little harder to find evidence of much home-grown film-making. The sad truth is that in countries where hunger, war and poverty are an everyday part of life, cinema is very low on most people’s list of priorities.

Having said that, small-scale indigenous kinds of cinema do exist in Africa, often in some of the most unlikely places. Since the Sixties, it has been the Francophone countries that have largely led the way. Film-makers like Senegal’s Ousmane Sembene and Mali’s Souleyman Cissé trained in the Soviet Union before coming home and making films that, while funded by European backers, addressed specifically African issues. 

Sembene, often called ‘the father of African cinema’, never shied away from controversy; his films cover subjects including emigration, corruption, the rise of Islam, female circumcision, and inter-communal strife. This may all sound a little dry and preachy on paper, but Sembene’s films (or at least the ones I’ve seen) are rooted in small communities, and full of humour and compassion. Unfortunately, they’re also rather difficult to see. In the UK, only the director’s last film Moolaade (2004) is available on DVD (he died in 2007). His great works – La Noire de… (1966), Xala (1974), Guelwaar (1992) – can mostly be found only on imported VHS tapes, or not at all. Sembene’s place in the history of film is at least as important as that of Pasolini or Wenders or dozens of other box-set-padding auteurs, so hopefully this state of affairs won’t last for long.

Ousmane Sembene's 'Xala'

Also only available on import is Hyènes (Hyenas), a 1992 film by Sembene’s compatriot Djibril Diop Mambéty. This is a real shame, firstly because Mambéty was self-trained and made only two features, and secondly because Hyènes is exactly the sort of accessible, dramatic piece that might convince more people that African cinema is worth a look. The film tells the story of the return to her impoverished hometown of a woman grown rich overseas. She offers to share her newfound wealth with the townsfolk on one condition: that they kill the man who wronged her many years before and who is now in line to be the next mayor. It feels like a Western and, in all truth, would be very good remade as a Western. Unfortunately Mambéty wouldn’t be in much of a position to benefit from this, as he’s been dead since 1998.

A film-maker who is very much alive, with works that can be more easily tracked down is Abderrahmane Sissako, who was born in Mauritania and raised in neighbouring Mali. His Bamako (2006) is a timely but perhaps overly didactic attempt to, quite literally, put the World Bank on trial for its activities in Africa. Sissako does this by way of a dramatised court session in a dusty Malian town. Interspersed with the ‘trial’ footage is the story of a singer who is preparing to escape to the capital and a rather odd mini-spaghetti-western starring Danny Glover. (Insert your own joke here about him being too old for this shit.)

Better, I think, is Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness (2002), a tale of borders and emigration set amidst the shifting sands of a coastal town on the edge of the Sahara. Through a series of interlinked tales, the director explores the relationship between Africa and the wider world. A westernised young man stays with his mother while waiting for some unspecified passport difficulties to be resolved; two men wait to escape to Europe while war ships patrol the coastal waters; a young boy learns a trade from an old, wise electrician; a young girl learns to sing and play the harp. Not much happens at all but, if you’re in the mood for something a little slow and reflective, it’s all rather beautiful.

Also worth a look, and available on DVD, are Abouna (2002) and Daratt (2006), two recent films by the Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun.

I’m well aware that I’ve done a lot of dropping of unfamiliar names here, and a lot of mentioning of films that are almost impossible to see. Unfortunately it’s difficult to write about African cinema without doing this. So much of it exists in an almost mythical state, known only by reputation or the memory of a distant, chanced-upon viewing. Hopefully, one day soon, someone will do for African cinema what Second Run has done for East European cinema by releasing a whole load of lost classics on DVD. Until then, there’s a lot of exploring still to do, and a lot of good stuff to be found.

As I walked out of The Constant Gardener with a couple friends, one of them said “That movie made me not want to be a part of this civilization”.  Now that was not a statement of distaste for the film, simply a distaste for some of the political themes in it.  I was quite absorbed by the plot as well, but I was really taken in by the love story. 

This is about two people who meet, rush in to passionate sex, get married, then start to get to know each other.   But before they can really get close, one of them is killed.  Rachel Weiz plays Tessa, who is murdered in a shroud of conspiracy.  Ralph Fiennes plays her husband, a British diplomat.  After her murder, he embarks on a personal odyssey for answers.

Along the way, he begins to really get to know the person he married, slowly falling more in love with her, and slowly becoming overtaken with grief.  The memory of her haunts him everywhere, as he visits places that they visited together.  These memories reflected some of my own, as I’m sure it will reflect yours as well.  Not in content, but in context.

Fernando Meirelles once again marries his frantic camera style with stunning cinematography and very real locations.  He must have a hell of an editor, because between this and City of God, he shows a knack for finding lots of angles as well as a good mix between long and short cuts.  The two movies that I have seen by him now show a very, very gifted director. 

The Constant Gardener is a movie that involves your emotions with romance, and brings in your brains with political intrigue.  It is a movie that should be seen by a lot of people.  Especially those who have a love for real filmmaking.

D. It is written.

If you’ve seen Slumdog Millionaire, you will know.

Some things we see or experience or know can connect us with something bigger than ourselves, something awesome and powerful and terrifying and hopeless - true desperation, poverty, horror – and yet something so hopeful the hairs on the back of my neck rise and make me want to shout out loud in a slightly embarrassing way “you see, there is more!!”.

Something, dare I say, spiritual.

it is written

When I see a film like Slumdog or The Constant Gardener or The Interpreter or many others that deal with the harsh realities of life I find they connect me with my spirituality – as if we can ever be “disconnected” – far more profoundly than a church service or a beautiful mountain scene or those horrendously cheesy posters with a big dog a small cat and a cheerful bible text.

Spirituality can so easily become entwined with sentimentality that it becomes nothing more than something about positive feelings. About me, my life, my well-being. In popular speak it refers to that un-identifiable something or other, usually accompanied by a “warm feeling”. A spiritual experience usually means a personal, inward looking one.

The moment...

But that is not a spirituality that sits well with Jesus. Sentimentality like that is too easy, too shallow; it cannot engage with true pain, with poverty, with torture, with utter hopelessness and desperation, with mediocrity or the plain dull; it cannot engage with the cross, the resurrection, with Jesus as Lord. It fears and resists being linked with a god who self-empties, who gives of himself and does not clutch his divinity or majesty but instead is willingly sent to be and to know and to love and to be loved by his human creations.

It is, of course, a start. We must feel and we must express sentiment. But that is not where it ends. There is a greater, deeper, more profound and beautiful and challenging and uncomfortable aspect to us that if we remain disconnected from it, we cannot be fully who we are created to be.

We are called not to have a sentimentality, but to have a sent mentality. It does not have “i” in the middle. So we must see films like Slumdog, or find some way to engage with real pain – which is far more than knowing it exists and feeling sorry for it – because it is to the middle of that pain that our spirituality is sent. To be part of the hope, the change, the light. That is the hope. Always the hope.

Our spirituality therefore must be robust. If it is weak it cannot stand among the slumdogs or the millionaires. And it must be centred on Jesus, not on the “I” of me. If it centres on me, then it has nothing to offer or give except me, and no-one to be sent except me, and that is not enough because only Jesus is. True spirituality must be about being sent to the mess, not sentimental about it.

Hacía tiempo venía esperando esta peli. No porque me gusten los melodramas de los judíos en el holocausto, muy por el contrario este incidente en la peli es más circunstancial que otra cosa y eso me gustó mucho.

The Reader una peli del querido Stephen Daldry, por fin llegó a nuestras pantallas. Es una peli que participó en los Oscar de este año, entonces no hay mucho lío. Lo increíble es que esta peli ganó Oscar a mejor actriz principal para Kate Winslet y fue nominada como mejor película, mejor dirección y mejor guión adaptado. ¿Por qué no la habían traído antes? No tengo la menor idea.

Esta peli ha resultado ser como el chontaduro, que se le describe con una pasión extrema. Ó es odiada o es amada. Por mi lado, y esto tengo que revisarlo muy personalmente porque me ha venido sucediendo repetidamente este año, me hizo quebrar en llanto otra vez. Es una peli conmovedora y extremadamente tierna. Adornada con una fotografía exquisita y unas imágenes narrativas muy a lo que nos tiene acostumbrados Daldry.

Nos pueden contar el final, nos pueden contar la trama, nos pueden decir que es buena o es mala, pero sólo cuando uno se enfrenta a la peli se puede dar cuenta de lo bien dirigida que está, de lo bien hecha que quedó, de las buenas actuaciones y de la bella fotografía. Tengo una anécdota, alguien me dijo esta peli es muy bonita y todo pero el maquillaje está tenaz, muy malo; le replique que si se había dado cuenta que tanto Rose Mather e Ilana Mather (madre e hija ) eran la misma actriz, me dijo que no y yo le respondí que para eso sirve un buen maquillaje.

Stephen Daldry es un director que ha hecho cuatro pelis, la primera no se la conozco, Eight de 1998, pero el resto, Billy Elliot de 2000, The Hours de 2002 y ahora esta The Reader, son de excelente factura y cada una de ellas ha sido nominada como mejor dirección en los Oscar. Daldry un amante de los dramas psicológicos nos ofrece unas producciones llenas de humanidad, de reconciliación y de escrúpulos. Sus dos últimas pelis le dieron el reconocimiento a sus actrices principales en sus respectivos premios de La Academia. Particularmente, Kate Winslet tuvo mucho coraje apra salir adelante con dos megaproducciones, esta, The Reader y acompañada de su esposo Sam Mendes en Revolutionary Road repitiendo reparto con Leonardo DiCaprio quien ya la había acompañado en Titanic de James Cameron de 1997. Para los Golden Globes, se llevó tanto mejor actriz de reparto como mejor actriz principal; para los Oscar no sólo se llevo mejor actriz principal sino que mantiene un prontuario envidiable con seis nominaciones. En esta peli la acompañan el joven David Kross, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz (magnífico actor que recordamos por Der Untergang interpretando a Adolf Hitler o sus participaciones en La Trilogía de los Ángeles de Wim Wenders) y Lena Olin. Aunque corta, la presencia de Fiennes es muy interesante; desde The Constant Gardener de Fernando Meirelles de 2005 he sentido en este actor una madurez actoral impresionante que se ha dedicado a producciones comerciales pero cuando se compromete con proyectos independientes logra explotar todo su potencial.

No es una peli fácil pero tampoco es tan díficil de comprender. El personaje de Winslet me conmueve en muchos sentidos y me recuerda que el hombre no es absolutamente malo, ni tampoco obra en maldad completamente consciente, que errar es humano pero amar es mucho más que divino, que somos hombres y que por alcanzar esta deidad podemos herir a otras personas sin darnos cuenta. Pero sobre todo que el orgullo es el peor de los enemigos de este.

]]> http://hiroshimatelegrafen.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/the-constant-gardener-2005/ Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:22:49 +0000 Hiroshimatelegrafen http://hiroshimatelegrafen.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/the-constant-gardener-2005/

Jag kom att tänka på den här filmen nu när jag har lärt mig om hur läkemedelsföretagen bedriver sin vidriga politik i världen.  Det här är verklighet, gott folk.

The Constant Gardener är en thriller som bygger på den världsberömde författaren John le Carrés “Den trägne odlaren” och är regisserad av Fernando Meirelles, som gjorde den flerfaldigt Oscarnominerade “Guds stad”.
I en avlägsen del av norra Kenya hittas Tessa Quayle, en engelsk frivillig hjälparbetare, brutalt mördad. Hennes reskamrat, en läkare från trakten, verkar ha flytt från brottsplatsen och allt pekar på att han skulle vara gärningsmannen. På The British High Commission i Nairobi, där Tessas make, den stillsamme trädgårdsintresserade Justin Quayle är anställd, försöker man tysta ner historien. Men Justin, som inser att allt inte står rätt till, börjar själv undersöka fallet.
Han finner saker som leder honom allt högre upp i den politiska hierarkien. Och där vill man inte bli störd.

Jag såg filmen när den kom ut och blev väldigt rörd av budskapet. Det fick mig att tänka.
Se filmen och vakna!

Tocmai ce am terminat de văzut primul sezon din serialul The Philanthropist, pe care îl recomand cu căldură celor care caută în divertisment ceva mai stimulant intelectual decât doi bărbaţi şi jumătate, şi mi-am amintit o melodie, dintr-o scenă incredibilă pe care am văzut-o în primul episod pe care o mai auzisem într-o scenă epică din filmul The Constant Gardener, cu Ralph Fiennes şi Rachel Weisz, al regizorului Fernando Meirelles.

Şi mă gândeam numai la cât de bine ar merge snippets din piesa asta într-o reclamă la o companie ca Petrom sau Rompetrol, cu pescăruşi în prim plan, la mare LOOL ca dovadă a asocierilor şi importanţei date de sunet în advertising.

Am găsit soundtrackul showului pe pagina dedicată serialului de pe siteul NBC, muzică pe care v-o recomand dacă v-aţi săturat de artificiile populare pe la noi zilele acestea.

P.S.

& probably more to come despre the philanthropist pentru că e un serial de comentart

“Carry with you at all times, your sense of caring and your concern. But put it into the mouths of flesh and blood people. If not, write tracts.”

This easily could be one of the more arguable sections in the Writing for Television series of talks.  One must of course remember the historical context that this discussion came from: the early 70’s and the Viet Nam era.  Serling did his most recognized work closer to the era of the HUAC hearings.

I’ll be the first one to admit the pitfalls of speaking of “causes” in any work, and perhaps that’s not the job of a writer whose job it is to “entertain”.  But in our generation, much of what we call entertainment seeks to do more than simply occupy our time, and many writers seek to move beyond the constraints of sheer entertainment.

This is not to say that speaking to controversial ideas, or dare I say it “a cause” is something new.  Dalton Trumbo was not exactly dancing a soft shoe when he wrote his novel, followed by the screenplay and directing his opus, Johnny Got His Gun. Serling himself isn’t exactly shy to tackle ideas of fascism in Seven Days in May.

But when he speaks of putting the “words into the mouths of flesh and blood people”, one could argue that he’s suggesting that better your characters carry the weight of an idea, rather than the author mounting her own soap box in a work.  After all, Serling was smart enough a producer on The Twilight Zone to know where he could take an idea, or how far he could push subject matter.

Flash forward to our modern era and we have shows like Battlestar Galactica, Six Feet Under, films like Syriana, The Constant Gardener and Milk which excel in dealing with controversial ideas in an open and thoughtful way.

So what has changed? Audiences?  The skill of the modern storyteller, or story craft itself?  To this day, there will always be some who will cry foul at films “with a message”, no matter how well or even handed a writer might deal with the material.  But I think the opportunity to tell those stories, for those who with skill enough to weave a subtle and engaging story tapestry, are present closer to today’s mainstream than ever before.

I wonder what you think about Serling’s perspective, and how things have changed since then.  How does a writer successfully speak toward a certain idea without mounting his soap box? And what ultimately makes a film successful or unsuccessful?

Megan Waterman is a junior at the University of Washington majoring in Chemistry with an interest in becoming a medical examiner.

Ok, so I don’t know about anyone else, but it was hard for me at first to pay attention to The Constant Gardener.  I kept thinking about Ralph Fiennes’ role in Red Dragon, expecting him to go crazy and start killing everyone.  This didn’t happen of course, and so once I got over that initial distraction, I began to realize what a tremendous job Fiennes was doing at getting the audience to truly understand his character, Justin Quayle.  He plays a British diplomat and sometimes a gardener with a very reserved personality.  While the story begins with a romance between Justin and Tessa (Rachel Weisz), the film is certainly more than just a happy sappy chick flick.  The actual movie begins at the end, with Justin being told that his wife has just been killed.  The audience is then brought back to discover what events led up to her unfortunate death, following Justin on this perilous journey for truth.

So Why The Constant Gardener?

As far as I can tell, the movie has absolutely nothing to do with gardening except for the fact that Justin happens to be a gardener.  So why was this title chosen for the film?  Here is what I have come up with: The audience only knows what Justin knows.  We see the world of the film through his eyes, and while we may be given hints about important events before Justin is made aware of them, they aren’t given any meaning until he finds it.  Some may think the film would be better suited with a name that had to do with drug testing  in Africa, or perhaps corruption within biomedical companies.  While these alternatives may be more appropriate for the majority of the events in the movie, they would have had the effect of changing the movie entirely.  Sure, the film would still have the same story line, the same characters, maybe even the same script.  But if the audience knew before it started why Tessa died, that African people were being used as guinea pigs for drug testing, or who the ‘villians’ of the film were, there would be no mystery, no suspense — no point in even watching the film.  So why is it called The Constant Gardener?  Because it keeps us guessing.  It keeps us wondering what lies around the next corner, and what truths the film holds, waiting to be discovered.

What are we supposed to take from this?

Rachel Weisz’s character in The Constant Gardener is all about helping the underprivileged, even if that means only a few people.  At one point in the film, Tessa wants Justin to agree to give a ride to a small family who will have to walk forty kilometers home from the hospital with a newborn baby.  Here is a glimpse into their dialogue in that scene:

Justin: We can’t involve ourselves in their lives, Tessa.
Tessa: Why.
Justin: Be reasonable. There are millions of people, they all need help.  It’s what the agencies are here for.
Tessa: Yeah, but these are three people that WE can help.

This reminds me of an organization called Compassion International, who’s mission statement, is: 

In response to the Great Commission, Compassion International exists as an advocate for children, to release them from their spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enable them to become responsible and fulfilled Christian adults.

Compassion International makes it possible for anyone who posseses the desire to sponser a child in need in hopes of giving them a good education, treatment to keep them in good health, and tools to help them become a well-rounded and fully developed member of society.  My mom is actually a part of this organization, and has been sponsoring a 12 year old girl named Jennifer Zulrika Rodriguez from the Dominican Republic for about 5 years now.  She pays a mere 40 dollars a month, exchanges the occasional letter back and forth, and has helped to make one child happier than she has ever been. 
Compassion International is a great example of showing that not everyone needs to move to Africa in order to help, as Tessa did in The Constant Gardener.  While the characters in the film were trying to bring about change on a large scale, I believe that the movie was also trying to hint at the fact that help on a small scale is where everything starts.  Not every person can go straight to the top of the chain and fix the world’s problems.  We have to simply do what we can and then hand the reins over to another person who will begin where we left off.  All it takes is a little will, and great things, no matter how small, can be accomplished.

Alex Freeman is a sophomore at the University of Washington with an intended major in Computer Science.

The Constant Gardener, a quick recap

For all of you who either haven’t seen it, or for those who are a little rusty on the film, The Constant Gardener is one of those few movies about   Africa (or more specifically in this case, Kenya) that break the presented problems down into small pieces that the viewer can swallow. In this particular film, the perspectives of two British persons are used to communicate the problems found in Africa: Justin, a diplomat, Tessa, who marries Justin largely for the purpose of traveling to Africa.  Tessa is killed early on in the film, and Justin then works to discover whether or not she had been faithful to him. In the process, he discovers the horrible facts about drug companies that Tessa had worked so hard to bring to the light. Drug companies had been testing their new drug on people in Africa without a care of the effects it cause them. Many died in the process, and those deaths were simply hidden away. Tessa uncovered this, and attempted to bring it to the public so that something  might be done. The drug companies involved found out about this, and so Tessa was “taken care of” before their secret could be revealed.

What should I take away from the film?

While the movie's specifics may not be correct, its main ideas are.

“The Constant Gardener” begs the viewer to question the message it’s trying to convey. The audience is meant to get two pieces right away. The first is that the situation in areas such as Kenya are poor enough that many aspects of our lives that we take for granted in the Western world are a rare sight indeed over there. An example, as shown in the video, is that of health care – very few receive proper health care, if any at all. The second piece that the audience was meant to take away is that drug companies are taking advantage of such poverty to experiment with their drugs, regardless of whether or not these experiments are potentially fatal. While these exact situations may or may not be true, the message remains. The movie conveys that there are certainly events similar to this occurring in Africa, and it is up to the viewer to decide how to react to such information. A further piece of information that the viewer may notice about the film is the lack of sympathy or support that Kenya received from any government (especially, in this case, the British government). This point is rather difficult to misinterpret: bad things are happening in Africa, and the governments of the world – especially those in the greatest position to help – do not seem to care.

We can’t all be a “Tessa”…or can we?

Groups like Invisible Children work hard every day to help those in Africa.

So, now that we have a new perspective on the situation, what’s next? In the movie, Tessa not only discovered many of the horrible events occurring in Kenya, but worked actively to present this information to the public. I am going to assume that most of those reading this are not necessarily prone to traveling to Africa and risking their lives in an attempt to recreate the actions of Tessa in the film. However, the film did point a finger toward some groups that are actively working to help out those in need in Africa. Among others, these include Oxfam International, Health Action International, and Medicins Sans Fronteras. If you’re interested in taking an active role in working for a better situation in Africa, those three are viable choices for where to start, among many others. Of course, there are many of us who are either uninterested in taking such an active role, or simply do not have the time. What, then, for the rest of us who still wish to help? There are countless ways that a person can put in any amount of their time, and have it put to good use. One excellent example is that of the Invisible Children group to help out children in Uganda, as first presented by Rochelle earlier in this blog. In April of 2006, I had the pleasure of joining this group and tens of thousands of others across the United States in the Global Night Commute. In this event, everyone involved slept outside in parks or similar areas in order to demonstrate the conditions of those in Uganda (to a much lightened degree, of course). It certainly drew public attention to some of the problems in Uganda, and I was personally able to be part of such an event that made some difference to those in Africa. Events such as the Global Night Commute happen often enough, and all that one needs to do is to look for such an opportunity for it to reveal itself.

“Big pharmaceuticals – they’re right up there with the arms dealers”

- Dr. Brandt, “The Constant Gardener”

In the film, drug companies were the specific group causing the horrible events in Africa. So what are we intended to draw from this? Should we be fearful of all drug companies? Should we stop funding them and refuse to take medication in case it was tested in Africa? This would hardly be a reasonable response. But what are we supposed to do? In truth, there is very little to be done in this regard. The film, while addressing general issues that are indeed a problem in Africa, is still a work of fiction. Thus, we can’t necessarily draw any conclusions regarding drug companies, especially any in particular. The best thing that we can do, unless we are willing to work actively with groups such as the ones mentioned above,  is to be aware. It may not be due to drug companies, but I can guarantee that there is at least one company that has taken advantage of the lack of control that many Africans have over their own lives. The film does an excellent job of bringing this to our attention. While it is very possible that none of those who read this will actually be able to change this, it certainly does not hurt to be informed regarding this subject. Who knows? Simply knowing may lead to one of us to changing things, or we may share this information with someone who will.

As our society gets more “civilized”, people are getting more and more apathetic.  As the communication between continents gets easier and easier, it seems that the distance between each individual person is further apart. All we care now is our own benefit. Who cares about the rest of the world – people who are starving, the countries which are full of disease and people who are suffering? I wish you will find an idea about this after reading this article. – Erik

A morning, fishes had been rushed to a shallow on the beach by the storm last night. The fishes were trapped in the shallow. Although the sea was just next to them, they could not swim back. A little boy picked up fish from the shallow and put them back to the sea. People walked to him and asked, “There’re hundreds of thousands of fishes in the shallow, you can’t save all of them.” “I know” the boy answered without looking at them. “So why are you still doing this? Who cares?” “This fish cares!” the boy answered while he put another fish back to sea. “ This fish cares, this fish also cares! And that one, and the one over there…”

Everyone only cares about things that affect his or her own life, health or family. We know there are many problems in the world. Some of them have already affected our lives, like the green house effect, soil erosion and the EL Nino phenomenon. There are also many problems happened in the other country that not affect our life. The question is do we have to take care about problems that are far away from us? Many people may answer yes. But do people really do something about it?

As an assignment, I watched The Constant Gardener this quarter. When I first heard about this movie, I thought it must be a boring movie. But after watching it, I love this movie. Fernando Meirelles filmed this movie in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Justin (Ralph Fiennes) was a British diplomat whose complacency was challenged when he was forced into a soul-searching quest for the reasons behind the tragic death of his wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz). People started thinking the reason caused the death of Tessa. Suspicion thoughts came to Justin. Still loving his wife, he decided to find out the truth and reclaim his wife’s besmirched reputation. He discovered a political intrigue between British and Kenyan governments testing a new TB drug on Africans.  The Constant Gardener reminded me of two the other movies, Lord of War and Hotel Rwanda.

Lord of War

“Lord of War” is all about the big business of war, and the cost of selling one’s soul. The whole movie did not talk about Africa until the last part and it was also the most impressing part to me. Yuri reentered the arms market when Baptiste approached him. He was reluctant at first. But when Baptiste told him that he would pay more than the usual rates, Yuri said yes and he decided to bring Vitaly along because he was nervous about the current climate of Liberia. However, they finally noticed that the business was actually taking place in Sierra Leone to the Revolutionary United Front. He said, “all these groups call themselves freedom this and democracy that, when they’re really just worse bunches of oppressors than the last bunch.” During the transaction, Vitaly witnessed a group of Revolutionary United Front rebels killing a mother and her child with machetes. He discovered if the deal got done, the entire village would be massacred. Then he pleaded with Yuri to stop the transaction, but Yuri said, “It’s not our conflict.” Later, Vitaly responded this by taking a grenade and blowing up a truck with half of the guns. Several guards watching the transaction shot Vitaly to death. When Vitaly lied on the ground, he was still trying to throw a grenade, his brother hold his hands and put the leading-wire back. Later, Yuri still accepted the deal and all the villagers were then slaughtered. This scene reminded me that the drug company gave the expired medicine to African People for tax free in The Constant Gardener. In the movie, when Justin went to the village, Dr. Lorbeer showed him these drugs and said that the best way to deal with these drugs was to burn them.

Here, you may ask that: “wait a minute, we have the UN, why won’t UN help to solve these problems?” In the following example, we will see the role UN plays in such situations.

Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda recorded a true historical event during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. During the Rwandan Genocide, over hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Paul Rusesabagina was a hotel manager, this movie documented Rusesabagina’s act to save more than a thousand refugees by granting them shelter in the besieged Hotel. The race problem still exits in Rwanda right now. People might wonder why UN did not go to help them? UN did, but they came back. The reason was that they thought they should not intervene other country’s politics. If this is true, one can also argue that the nuclear problem in North Korea and Iran, the human rights problem in Iraq are other countries’ internal problem. But why do UN and other countries step into these countries? My guess is these problems are large enough to threaten our lives whereas the Rwandan Genocide won’t affect the rest of the world at all. In the movie, UN helped save people’s lives, but without Paul it never would happen. UN Colonel Oliver said, “We are peacekeepers, not peace makers”. However, without a “peace maker” where will UN find peace to keep?

Yuri chose to sell weapon to the Revolutionary United Front, even though he knew all the villagers would be killed. UN chose to leave, even though they knew they were “peacekeepers”.  Back to The Constant Gardener, where Tessa asked him to give one family a ride, but Justin refused because he thought there are too many people who need help, they can’t help all of them. But Tessa tried to help any one of them by her best.  After Tessa’s death, when Justin tried to help a black girl get on the UN plane, the staff from UN refused his request. Justin also tried to bribe that staff. The answer was still no. That staff said: “It’s the rule! There’s too many who need help”. Justin just replied to him, “But we can help this one! Just here!”

Why was death the destiny of Tessa and the other people like her who cared enough to other people?  Are they wrong? Do we have to wait until we lost the one we love, until it actually affects our own life, and then we start to care about the other people?

Who cares?

“I care”, a little fish

Rochelle Jones: A freshman at the University of Washington who is currently majoring in Business Administration with concentrations in Marketing and Entrepreneurship.

A view of the Hollywood sign courtesy of maggieandannie.com

Often while watching movies we look for story lines, main characters, and other little details that society has taught us to look for throughout time such as romance, guts, and victory. We often overlook the social issues movies can often represent, and we neglect to realize that perhaps there is some truth behind the “lights, camera, action” mindset of Hollywood and other major movie producers. We’ve been conditioned to recognize films’ plots as being completely false, and we ignore the details that may be the most important aspects of the director’s work.

Tessa and Justin Quayle, courtesy of BBC News Images.

“Movies are something people see all over the world because there is a certain need for it.”

The audience enters the world of Justin and Tessa Quayle in the opening scenes where Justin has just been informed of her disappearance and supposed death. From there, we flash back to the very beginning of the time together where we learn that Justin is a very calm, British diplomat who falls in love with an outspoken woman. There’s Hollywood. It’s love, it’s mushy, and it captivates us. I am guilty of this captivation, and I’ll admit from the beginning I felt intrigued by their relationship. Then, the British High Commission sent the Quayles to Africa, which changed their entire lives. Tessa, enticed by the pharmaceutical companies visible in African villages, begins to research KDH and Three Bees. While this may just seem a part of the plot, it brings to light some incredibly important issues that have continued to be swept under the rug for far too long. Tricky little game the media industry played on us. They roped us in with kisses and smiles, and then BAM! Something that actually really matters came along. Pharmaceutical companies have taken advantage of an innocent group of people and have viewed their lives as “disposable”. According to Karl Marx, at the point where the citizens have lost their values as humans are the same points where their lives become commodified. Their value is that they are part of the test subject market, and they completely lose their rights as people. While this is only one aspect of the crisis occurring in Africa, it still brings attention to the fact that problems overseas have not been addressed with enough action even if the U.N. does claim to be involved.

“Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.”

We all see the images. Starving, mistreated, deathly ill people all left to suffer just because of the place in which they were born. Everyday you hear people complaining about the current state of our economy. We live in a society where we don’t think things could be worse than the condition we’re in.  Imagine things being an infinite amount worse than how we live, and I’m sure that’s close to the lifestyle of most African villagers. The first time I really heard any startling facts about the treatment of Africans is when an organization called Invisible Children visited my high school. With them, they brought a film that really startled me because I knew it was one hundred percent true. Images flashed of young children being taken away from their families in order to become soldiers, walking miles to school in the rain, and taking care of their siblings because their parents had died from HIV/AIDS. Young boys become stripped of their rights and have been forced to become soldiers, being controlled entirely from the time they are brought into the army.

Video courtesy of Youtube

Need proof that troubles in Africa really are occurring?

“A Congolese government spokesperson told Agence France-Presse that multi-national forces have a large contingent of LRA fighters trapped in a swampy area in a remote portion of Garamba Forest. “We think that Joseph Kony is with them,” the spokesperson said, however, many of the reports coming from the multi-national force pursuing the LRA have been met by intense international scrutiny and have been seen as an attempt to validate the increasingly controversial operation to destroy LRA strongholds within the DR Congo. Since “Operation: Lightning Thunder” commenced in mid-September (2008), the LRA has responded by killing over 800 civilians and abducting approximately 500 Congolese men, women and children (LRA attacks highlighted in above map). According to UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes, the multi-national operation organized against the LRA must go on, “I think they need to see the operation through. I don’t know how long that will take…but I think there is no point in putting a premature end to it,” he then highlighted the “catastrophic consequences” of the operation and reassured the international community that the UN will “continue to pick up the pieces.”

-www.invisiblechildren.com 4/1/2009

“Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

As general citizens of the world, we are all guilty of it. In no way can I claim that at all times I put others’ feelings first. Whether it is innate nature or not, as humans we all strive to make ourselves happy whether that be through profit (pharmaceutical companies) or reaching out to global communities (Tessa).

Our society has largely influenced us to lean more towards the profit seeking attitude. Hollywood especially perpetuates this image through multi-million dollar making celebrities with lavish houses and fancy cars. America has become so fixated on the image that we have spiraled into an economic crisis, when in fact compared to most countries we still have more comfort, health, and happiness available to us. 

While there are organizations already in existence that have been providing aid to Africa, the problems in existence continue to grow larger. Although The Constant Gardener was only two hours in length, the impact it can potentially have on viewers is endless. Whether or not you decide to act upon the hidden truths this movie has unveiled, such as the ledgers do in “The Bear” by William Faulkner, is entirely up to you. Although at first we may view the movie as unrealistic and misinforming, the facts can be found on multiple government and organizational websites. There’s no way so many groups can “make up” the same news reports.

Hollywood has started numerous trends, and recently it has been more apparent that celebrities have become involved in numerous social advocacy groups. While many aspects of Hollywood are false from the movie plots to spray-tanned blondes, this is one lesson the whole world should actually focus on learning from the famous.

You may only be one person, but one person holds the power to create an infinite amount of change. We hold the power to make a huge difference. Use that power.

-Angelina Jolie is well known for her work in Africa and other foreign countries in need. Photo Courtesy of thebosh.com 

Nick Visser – I’m a first-year student at the University of Washington over in the eternally sunny city of Seattle, working towards a degree in journalism and something else unknown -

The Constant Gardener presumed me sympathetic, frustrated, while at the same time infuriating me, but I’m going to focus on the closing scene, analyzing what I read from it and how I believe it affects the overall concept or the motive of the film and what viewers should see in Justin’s character.

Please follow along, and enjoy. (There are a few dozen SPOILERS below)

Play the Video as You’re Reading…Just to get a touch of Kenyan Vibes Flowing

From Diplomat to Humanitarian

Fernando Meirelles opens up the film with a scene in which the viewer immediately assumes that there is some form of distrust or infidelity within the marriage of Tessa (Rachel Weisz) and Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), a man who is first shown watching his wife walk away with another man into the distance.  Justin epitomizes the mold that the perfect diplomat must follow; being void of most emotion, bland, and even holding a solid demeanor when told his wife is suspected to be dead.  The first half of the film is a potpourri of real time scenes and flashbacks as he slowly uncovers the hidden life and work of his wife. Through all of this he still remains stone-faced and detached, and the viewer never sees the suspected breakdown and grief individuals usually suffer.

After hitting wall after wall while trying to find the cause of Tessa’s death, Justin finally breaks down in London at his wife’s home where they had one of their first encounters.  His passport had been revoked and Pellegrin (Justin’s superior who is revealed to be in the pocket of the Three Bees) had bluntly warned that it would “do [him] no good poking under rocks…some very nasty things live under rocks.”  The casual lack of interest in Pellegrin’s voice is simply offensive and demeaning, and Justin should have thrown the fish in his face, but alas that may have detracted from his character development.  At this moment the audience may have empathy for Fiennes’ character as Justin continues his search for Tessa’s motives and where all the barriers arose and why.

Justin’s Discovery

The plot of the movie is permeated with traditional big-budget film devices – high profile actors, plots of infidelity, and government corruption – but the society viewers are thrust into is so similar, it’s too similar.  To clarify, you either have to watch this movie as an active or a passive viewer, asking yourself if the plot should spark investigation, or a wiggle and a smile as you walk out the theater door to move on with your life uninterrupted.  It’s difficult to take much away from the film without changing your life philosophy and questioning if this really happens; if all of this Hollywood mumbo-jumbo is actually based on something .  Not based on some past event like the Cold War, but based on something that could be going on right now, this very moment as you read this blog.  It’s hard to think about what humans are capable of and still remain optimistic.

Justin had a similar reaction in the beginning of the film, not really caring about the plight of the Kenyans even if they needed to walk forty kilometers from the only hospital to their home.  It does seem a tad ludicrous to attempt to uncover a ring of murders committed by a billion-dollar corporation, which the first-world nations see as producing needed pharmaceuticals.  However, Justin does resolve to risk his own life for the benefit of the many and the underrepresented. It seems noble and viable to sacrifice one to save many – if that one volunteers for it – yet deceptive and cowardly to coerce that one with bribes and lies.

Using his Body After Death

In the closing scene of the film, Justin is admiring the landscape in the same locale where Tessa was killed, revealing that he is at home where he is, in the land he loves reflecting on the woman he adored.  If you look closely you can see Justin take the clip of bullets out of the gun given to him, and he throws it on the ground away from him.  Yet he still holds the gun firmly in his hand and stands up with it when the assassins come to carry out their job.  What I see but don’t see (as we never do view Justin’s killing) is that as they approach him, he would turn around with the gun in his hand.  The first reaction from all of the shooters after a gun is pointed at them would be to fire and in turn guarantee that Justin’s death will never look like a suicide.  “There were no less than eight holes in his body, from three different guns,” and I believe that after understanding that through Pellegrin’s letter and his death, the cover-up and testing would begin to unfold, and could only snowball into something much, much grander.

Meirelles developed the idea that even if you can only help one individual at a time, that one still makes a difference; a person’s life is saved.  Everyone has to start somewhere, and even Justin doesn’t realize this until the final half of the film.  The tale closes with the Three Bees having approved another African drug company to utilize the TB testing supplies even after Pellegrin’s letter was leaked.  Major corporations never fall overnight, and the ones who seem to be doing ‘God’s work’ by producing drugs to cure the weak – no matter how corrupt – are extremely arduous to replace with the valiant.

Just ask yourself if you would sacrifice a TB vaccine for yourself and your entire family,  or let a few unknowns die so you can live……

As I was finishing up my final project  about representations of black models in the fashion industry, interestingly enough, I thought the class discussion we had about The Constant Gardener became even more relevant. During the class discussion, what intrigued me was that while The Constant Gardener did strike me as a love story rather than a movie about Africa, but I didn’t find that necessarily upsetting or even problematic, because it “got the job done”—the job of presenting a beautiful, heart-wrenching love story. 

To get more into the story-telling mechanism (as opposed to the issues of representation), I also loved the gardening motif, because the meticulous nature of gardening and Justin’s love of having everything under control were juxtaposed with the chaotic nature of the work done by Tessa and the messy reality about Africa and pharmaceutical companies that she was involved with. As Justin finds out more about what Tessa was doing while alive, the perfect reality that he seemingly had control over starts falling apart, just as his gardens start falling apart: when Justin goes back to England and finds his old garden withering and out of order, the harsh reality of the world without Tessa and perfect order that he cherished hits him, and he breaks down.

Alek Wek in 1997 Lavazza calendar

So what is at stake when the story is so beautiful and neat? It let me forget about Africa. Is putting the issues of representations aside necessarily blameworthy? At the time of class discussion, I didn’t really have a response, let alone a definite answer. The question surfaced again recently when I started delving into representations of black models from 1970s to today and see how many thing have changed and how many things have not. Even as black models recently started voicing their opinions about under-representation and/or racist/stereotypical portrayal of black models, some images are so well done and beautiful that issues of representation are hardly obvious. For example, even as model Alek Wek criticized a shot she did for Lavazza’s 1997 calendar for having a blatant racist undertone, she admitted that it was a beautiful image; responding to the criticism, the company’s spokesman contended it was a beautiful image and there was nothing else to talk about.

Iman in Tigress ad

Similarly, many stereotypical images that contain the Africa=tribal/exotic formula that Iman and Naomi Campbell were part of in the 80s and the 90s are aesthetically pleasing, not necessarily because I think the stereotypical imagery fits them well, but because they are good models. 

 While those images are easier for me to be critical of—mostly thanks to readings and discussions from this class, if I were to not pay attention to those details, my inclination to praise the aesthetic quality of these images suppresses the critical perspective that I need in order to demand some change in representations of Africa, just as my inclination to praise the beautiful story of The Constant Gardener kept me from being critical of the movie. So now the question of “what is at stake” becomes: how do we enjoy without becoming accomplices, or if we were to not enjoy it, how do we force ourselves to deny the pleasure that pop culture inherently seeks to supply without being completely clueless about what pop culture means? The search for an answer landed me with more questions, but I’d like to think that I will be able to continue the search beyond this class.

The Constant Gardener was a very good film, and just the sort of thing I like. It was political and personal, absorbing and moving. It had a relevant social point, but it wasn’t boring. Which is perhaps why I don’t have anything to say about it. I just liked it. At the same time, I don’t think it was a great piece of cinema. It’s certainly not a movie that I’ll wake up thinking about months from now. But it was solid.

Broken Flowers, on the other hand, was not at all moving. I remember when Bill Murray had some charisma. I don’t know who told him the height of his talent was his ability to be silent, still and unlovable as a rock. Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to Broken Flowers. I did think nearly every character in this movie was fascinating, three-dimensional and well-drawn, except Murray’s, and perhaps that was the point: he is the dull, passive epicenter around which life moves, but which is itself unmoved by life. And I appreciated the ending: through no real effort of his own, Murray’s character (whose name I can’t even remember) had created a mystery for himself, and his life from here out would be dominated by that wonder, whether he wanted to think about it or not. I suppose my main problem was that I absolutely couldn’t fathom why people were drawn to Murray’s character at all. Why did all these women love him? Of course, women do fling themselves at nothing men all the time, so perhaps that’s not that unrealistic.

Nine Lives was a real stinker of a movie. It felt like being forced to watch some evening of short plays by college-aged playwrights. I have had to sit through more than enough of those evenings in my life. The dialogue felt canned, the settings were too precious (see Robin Wright Penn and dude wheeling eternally through a supermarket), almost all the acting was forced and overly self-conscious. I’m amazed I sat through the entire thing, but I’m glad I did, because the final vignette with Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning was the only good one. It was sweet and sad and real. Like the others, most of the drama remained undeclared, but unlike the others, the emotion seemed believable, and the characters invested and emotionally honest. Still didn’t make up for the previous eight lives, however.

Like Nine Lives, Water Drops On Burning Rocks felt like a stage play, but unlike Nine Lives, WDOBR felt like a play written by a seasoned professional who’s lived a bit (and it was indeed based on a play). This was the best dark comedy about sexual politics and the ways in which we use other people to flagellate ourselves that I’ve seen since Secretary. The grotesque 70s costumes and set design are icing, and there’s a freaking awesome dance sequence toward the end.

Oh, and I finally saw Deliverance. Which was certainly harrowing, but not nearly as horrifying as I’d been led to expect. I thought it was going to be a Misery-style abduction that went on for hours, and I’m very glad it wasn’t. It certainly deserves its place in the canon, although I do not at all believe that John Voight scaled that cliff.

The next time you are outing shopping and you happen to come across a pair of jeans or a pair of sunglasses you want to get so bad but don’t have money, you should think about the people in Africa.

Life is too short to not enjoy it.

I cried when I while watching The Constant Gardener. I started to think about the people in Africa. Life is too short to not enjoy it, but, what about the people in Africa for example. They are given no choice at all, and sometimes kids are born into a dead end because their mothers died. People are starving, no food, no fresh water, and no roof over their heads, and diseases are killing many every day. These people are living on the edge of a cliff and they are relying on a tiny string to hold them from falling down the cliff. Life like this is not fun. They are constantly fighting to survive. Many of us think that life is too short not to enjoy it, so we spend whatever we make, wearing all brand name clothes, and do whatever we can to look better than other people around us. Some put their lives in danger by having plastic surgery. I feel like this is too much, and if these people can spend all this money just to make themselves look better then why can’t they help a child, or do something.

Another thing that I cannot imagine is how the drug companies in the movie are so inhumane, and this has happened in the past before. They are treating people like animals by testing drugs on them. The drug companies are trying to make money and they are totally ignoring the health other people.

I really admire Tessa in the movie who is risking her life to help the people in Africa. Not everyone can do it, and I don’t expect anyone to do it. She is really brave and generous. However, there are other small things that I know I can do to help them such as joining an organization or just by donating.

Speak out

There are many people out there like me who do not read or watch the news, or even care about other things on the other side of the world. Our lives are too busy to worry about other things. Right? This is called ignorant. However, there are people who try to speak out for the unfortunate people. This is something that everyone should be aware of and if you are not touched by what I’m been saying yet, take a look at this poem from PoemsofSoul.com by Toris Okotie (The African Poet) NY.

My African Child
 So young in heart 
 He cried for milk 
 So poor and helpless 
 Mama weeps in pain 

 His eyes so red 
 A week he cried 
 A month ago, 
 To the world he came 

 Mama so young 
 Papa has run 
 Under the bridge 
 They lay their heads 

 In storm and rain 
 They search for food 
 Through man and sex 
 Mama fed him well 

 The days went by 
 Mama health decreased 
 Only five months old 
 Mama said goodbye 

 In rain and cold 
 He cried so loud 
 In sun and heat 
 He wept and wept 

 Three days gone by 
 Since mama left 
 And now he sleeps 
 To meet with mama

www.oneafrikan.com

Want more poems? Visit Poems of Soul.