The fragmented style of "The Constant Gardener" is the best way to tell this story. It is not a story told where the beginning starts with a mystery and ending at truth, but a circling around an elusive conspiracy. In a remote area of Northern Kenya, the passionate Tessa Quayle, played by Rachel Weisz, has been found brutally murdered. Tessa's travelling companion, a local doctor, appears to have fled the scene and the evidence points to a crime of passion. Members of the British High Commission assume that Tessa's widowed husband, Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), will leave the matter to their discretion. Determined to clear his wife's name and "finish what she started", Justin embarks on a crash course to learn about the pharmaceutical industry, whose crimes Tessa was on the verge of uncovering. The film involves drug companies who test their products on the poor of the Third World and are willing to accept the deaths that may occur because, after all, those people don't count. Why not you might ask, no one is there to count them.
Film editing could be called 'film construction' and has been regarded by many as the 'invisible' art behind some of the greatest motion picture sequences of all time. Film editing is a skilled art - the selection and integration of a sequence of shots taken from thousands of feet of film to establish a structure, tempo, mood, or style. Editing a films emotional intention of a scene is not realized: you don't laugh at what was intended to be funny, or you laugh at a scene where you were supposed to cry; the audience lacks information necessary to understand the relations between the characters or the action; or the narrative creates expectations that are not fulfilled by the story as it evolves. There is a scene where Ralph Fiennes is on the computer and he sees an e-mail which suggests that his wife might be having an affair. Just following that, she emerges from her bath and walks with Ralph to a nursery that they are preparing for their baby. There's this lovingness between them that erases, for a moment, any idea of infidelity."