So, I took the lovely A-Heldin to see a movie on Monday. Since it was Date Night, and her birthday to boot, I figured we’d go see a chick-flick. Eschewing the standard date fare of Mission Impossible and Hostel, I suggested we go see The Constant Gardener. A-Heldin is also fond of plants, so I thought it was money in the bank.

Despite the name, there’s precious little actual gardening in the film. Just a few token bits here and there, but hardly anything that would earn the description “constant”. As it turns out, it’s a movie with a grave Social Message. I figured that part out when Rachel Weisz broke down crying over Britain’s decision to forego U.N. parliamentary procedure vis à vis the Iraq War. This is what we’ve come to, I sighed. Distilling morality down to whether or not that 15th Security Council resolution got passed to support the preceding 14. A break with bureaucratic procedure actually provided the moral impetus for the film. Yawn. But moonbat chicks are notoriously easy, and 80 frames later Weisz is legs up with Ralph Fiennes in her posh London flat.

The film had as little to do with the Iraq War as it did with gardening. In other words, five minutes into the film, I found myself emotionally alienated from the characters, due to the horribly one-sided presentation of a serious topic which was completely unconnected with the story. Iraq wasn’t mentioned again.

Weisz won an Oscar for her role. I don’t know if she really acted all that well (the movie was dubbed in German), but I have a sneaking suspicion that her transformation into Tessa was largely responsible for the Academy’s decision.

Here she is normally:

And here’s how she appeared in the film:

Astounding.

The movie Itself was about mean, ruthless pharmaceutical companies furthering its agenda in Africa by strong-arming the poor and executing dissenters. The rubber stamp-worshipping Tessa (Weisz) falls victim to these heartless and, for the most part, faceless scoundrels. The irony of it all was that she actually wanted to name her kid in the movie “Che”. Che Guevara, who ran the torture dens for Castro during the Revolution, is the heroine’s inspiration?

The difference between Castro’s goon and the pharma boys: Profit motive. What makes people really evil isn’t oppression, torture, or murder. That’s alright, apparently, as long it’s all done in the name of Social Justice. Cutting in line at the U.N. and making a buck while curing diseases, however, is beyond the pale. The morality of good and evil in this film doesn’t boil down to the tactics used by the drug companies, since these tactics have been used by Socialist regimes like Castro’s for nearly 100 years, with nodding approval from people like Gardener’s main characters.