The Constant Gardener vs Grizzly Man

Certain movies come designed to make you feel like a better person just for watching them. Like you’ve done something charitable or that you’ve got a thicker social conscience than you would have otherwise. It helps if one of the characters is a martyr for a cause, especially is she’s beautiful and feisty and pisses people off. Come on, would you have cared as much about gorillas if Sigourney Weaver didn’t?

The Constant Gardener, despite having the heaviest storyline in the history of ever ever, avoids coming across as a downer, and it’s not preachy or clichéd or boring. Is this movie even real? I think maybe I dreamed it.

Rachel Weisz stars (I’m so glad I can finally use the words “Rachel Weisz stars” without having to follow it with “alongside CGI mummies”) as Tessa Quayle, a passionate and controversial activist. When we meet her, she’s meeting her future husband, Justin (Ralph Fiennes), who is an intellectual, and probably seems passionate himself when he’s not around Tessa; she has a way of making everyone else seem a little inconsequential with her determination and productivity. After an afternoon with Tessa, you’d probably go home and search for something else to recycle. Justin is the gardener of the title, but the “Constant” refers more to his steady, stable way of living, thinking, and balancing Tessa’s more extreme emotions and opinions. Tessa thinks there is a link between pharmaceutical companies, AIDS in Africa, a future possible tuberculosis epidemic, a murder, famine and much much more. Many of her theories seem perfectly logical, and others escape me some, but I always took her word for it. She’s so pissed off and smart, and she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty or to offend people in positions of power. She’s like Erin Brockovich with frequent flier miles.

And so, of course, Tessa is murdered. It’s not a spoiler, it happens quite early in the film, and then Tessa’s recent life is shown to us in flashbacks. Rachel Weisz is so unexpectedly graceful, funny, sexy and smart as Tessa. I’ve liked her for some time; she’s beautiful and soulful in so many movies that don’t require it. But in The Constant Gardener, Rachel Weisz is a star. She’s nobody’s Lesser Kate Winslet anymore. As Justin, Ralph Fiennes is incredible, because he’s Ralph Fiennes and he doesn’t have a single other option. Justin needs to find out the missing parts of Tessa’s story, not just how she died, but how she lived when not with Justin. He’s got an ally, perhaps, in Danny Huston, but with Bill Nighy and Pete Postlethwaite in the cast, you can rest assured that every character will not bless Justin with good intentions.

My friend Veronica lived in England for a time, and became a fan of a quiz show based on difficult math problems. The winner was not necessarily the one who got the answer the quickest, but the one who got there in the best way. For some people, there’s a style to logic; there can be grace even in absolutes. I thought of this some while watching The Constant Gardener. There are indisputable facts present throughout (not all from Tessa; she’s refreshingly complex and flawed), but they’re communicated with beautiful cinematography, and what I can only describe as emotional editing. Things don’t always line up, but spill out like memories, in pieces and an order that makes sense when you’ve gotten the whole story.

The Constant Gardener was directed by Fernando Meirelles, of the should-be-required-viewing City of God. His move to the mainstream contains no compromises. Meirelles has so much style, but never makes that the point of the movie. His script (by Jeffrey Caine), is smart enough to contain its characters, but doubles back often enough for those of us who may or may not have watched Skeleton Key recently.

Grizzly Man is also the story of a passionate, frustrating activist with a story told in flashbacks. Grizzly Man isn’t a story where you have to organize fact and fiction, however, because Grizzly Man is a documentary.

Timothy Treadwell used to be a guest on Letterman. He was childlike and possessed a similar enthusiasm to the Crocodile Hunter. He spoke of bears as if no one else had ever heard of bears, and that if we listened closely to his stories, we might too believe in these huge mythical creatures. I hear they can play banjo! I bet bears wear overalls and ball caps! I wonder where they shit?

Timothy Treadwell, of course, lived with bears, and studied them for over a decade, much like Diane Fossey with gorillas. And he died for it, horribly.

Grizzly Man is composed mostly by footage filmed by Timothy Treadwell. He wasn’t just interested in teaching the world about bears, guaranteeing the animals more rights and safety. He was also interested in selling himself as some sort of wildman celebrity, perfect for hosting his own outdoors program. We see Treadwell redoing certain shots, filming coverage in different outfits, and thinking up ways to present himself in a more rugged and authoritative way.

And the thing is, the bears are beautiful. They’re majestic, funny creatures. And Treadwell seemed quite comfortable and smart around them. Maybe he did understand them. Maybe they really were his friends. But they were bears. And bears, in case you don’t know, really, with all their hearts, want to eat us. Timothy’s commentary in the documentary, especially some of the stuff he says with bears right behind him, is overconfident and presumptuous, as if we aren’t safe around bears because we aren’t Timothy Treadwell.

The director, Werner Herzog, interviewed several of Treadwell’s associates, and a couple critics, and they all agreed that Timothy either thought he was a bear, or desperately wanted to be a bear. I’m not so sure about that. I think Timothy Treadwell was one of those fringe of society guys, and that if he hadn’t found bears, he’d be that super weird guy at work who’s backstory is a complete mystery to his coworkers, or one of those lonely, crazy people on the sidewalk, screaming about nothing. He wasn’t a bear, but he found them, and for a brief time, they were lucky to have him. And vice versa.

Grizzly Man, ultimately, for me, is not as successful as The Constant Gardener. There are a few interview subjects who are a little too comfortable in front of the camera. It’s not so much that the scenes feel staged (of course they are; it’s not like a documentary doesn’t use cameras and lights and multiple takes), as much as they seem to follow a simple logic they think the audience expects. When one of Treadwell’s ex-girlfriends receives his watch, her reaction is…I shouldn’t say. Maybe she was really into that watch.

The Constant Gardener: A
Grizzly Man: B