Ever since hearing this interview with Ralph Fiennes and finding out Fernando Meirelles was directing, I've been waiting for this to come out. City of God was nothing short of epic and incredible, and the last John Le Carré novel to be turned into a film (The Tailor of Panama) was damn good as well.
I just saw the Constant Gardener a couple hours ago, and it is undoubtedly one of the best films I've ever seen. It's been unfairly billed as a thriller, but there is something rather insulting about that term. Yes, there is a mystery and spies. There is murder and there are coverups. But the movie is much more than that; it is an epic love story between a man, a woman, and the rest of humanity. Meirelles brings to Constant Gardener the sense of justice and outrage so evident in City of God; the political and socioeconomic subtext of the film is less subtext and more bedrock for the film. Still, Mereilles never lets it get away from him, the characters always real, the love story always quietly touching as it's slowly revealed.
I'll spare everyone plot summaries and leave it at this: few films have ever left me so speechless.
I just saw the Constant Gardener a couple hours ago, and it is undoubtedly one of the best films I've ever seen. It's been unfairly billed as a thriller, but there is something rather insulting about that term. Yes, there is a mystery and spies. There is murder and there are coverups. But the movie is much more than that; it is an epic love story between a man, a woman, and the rest of humanity. Meirelles brings to Constant Gardener the sense of justice and outrage so evident in City of God; the political and socioeconomic subtext of the film is less subtext and more bedrock for the film. Still, Mereilles never lets it get away from him, the characters always real, the love story always quietly touching as it's slowly revealed.
I'll spare everyone plot summaries and leave it at this: few films have ever left me so speechless.
Seriously, I want to see it, thanks for the heads up.