The secrecy surrounding drug company dealings in The Constant Gardener is likewise torn from news stories about scandals involving the suppression of negative data. But recent episodes of drug companies testing their products demonstrate that Mr le Carré's charge, sadly, has some grounding in reality.
The film is a stinging critique of the drug industry and one that should be taken seriously.įor example, the film's portrayal of Big Pharma exploiting the continent of Africa as a vast laboratory to satisfy Western demand for drugs while placing African lives at risk might be seen as the stuff of fiction. It might be presumed that this would taint the film and make it less believable, but such a presumption would be a shame. Le Carré takes a bit of poetic licence in his novel in having his protagonist murdered. Big Pharma, as it is known, offered everything: the hopes and dreams we have of it its vast, partly realized potential for good and its pitch-dark under-side, sustained by huge wealth, pathological secrecy, corruption, and greed.” “The multinational pharmaceutical world, once I entered it, got me by the throat and wouldn't let go. Le Carré wrote in the Nation magazine on 9 April 2001 that he settled on drug companies as the focus of The Constant Gardener after rejecting the “scandal of spiked tobacco” and the “vast human disaster” of oil companies. music.Ī stinging critique of the drugs industry: The Constant Gardener, starring Rachel Weisz Director Fernando Meirelles (Oscar nominee as the director of City of God) centres the story in a remote area of northern Kenya, giving tantalising glimpses of African landscapes-set to captivating and unforgettable music. Along the way, he uncovers diplomatic secrets, corporate conspiracy, and, ultimately, the real reason for his wife's activism-and her murder.įans of le Carré's cold war spy novels will enjoy the taut intrigue of The Constant Gardener, in which cold war enemies are replaced by Big Pharma and its critics. Her husband, Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), a member of the British High Commission, is forced to navigate a deadly house of mirrors, and some personal demons, in order to pursue her killers. The film, based on the eponymous novel by John le Carré, opens with the brutal murder of a young activist, Tessa Quayle (played by Rachel Weisz), in Kenya. However, drug companies might look back fondly at that 13% rating after The Constant Gardener opens in US cinemas on 26 August. A Harris Poll last year that found only 13% of the US public believes that pharmaceutical firms are “generally honest and trustworthy.” That low regard puts drug companies on a par with tobacco and oil companies.