The constant gardener movie ending explained
David spent some weeks in Basel, talking in confidence to middle managers in pharmaceutical companies, who told him shocking stories of falsification of clinical trials and humans in poor countries being used as guinea pigs. Ted Younie, a former SIS man who had spent almost all his career in Africa, whispered “Pharmaceuticals” in his ear. He wanted to write about the crimes of unbridled capitalism, nowhere more evident than in Africa.
Hence the eventual title of the novel ‘The Constant Gardener’.ĭavid planned to set the novel in Africa. He too has lost someone to whom he will remain constant, even when it appears that she has betrayed him. It would prove to be the first sketch of the character at the centre of his next novel: Justin Quayle, a dignified, quietly spoken, middle-aged diplomat. David was inspired to write the first page of a first chapter under the heading ‘The Mad Gardener’. “We call him ‘The Mad Gardener’,” she explained to David, once the visitor had shyly taken his leave. “One day”, he thought, “I’ll find a way to write about you and your multis.” He stored away the cyclist’s fury for future use.Ībout fifteen years later he was sitting in a small London restaurant when an elegant grey-suited man appeared with a basket of fresh cut flowers under his arm, and began bestowing bouquets on each group of diners before accepting a kiss and a glass of wine from the proprietress. “They would poison the globe,” he said, “if by doing so they could bump up their share prices.”ĭavid enjoyed a frisson of forewarning. The multinational pharmaceutical companies clustered along the banks of the upper Rhine. He was a former chemist, he explained, but now he was an anarchist because he refused to take part in the poisoning of mankind. A black-bearded cyclist in a beret had ridden through the open double doors, parked his bike at David’s table, and started talking. The origins of ‘The Constant Gardener’ went back to a chance encounter one summer’s evening when he was drinking in a beer hall in Basel. The excerpt below is from Episode 5, read by Stephen Boxer, and begins about 3 minutes into the broadcast. Last week, BBC Radio nominated ‘ John le Carré: The Biography’, written by Adam Sisman, as its ‘Book of the Week’, and broadcast an abridged version, spread over five 30-minute episodes. The film won several awards, including an Oscar for Rachel Weisz, who played Tessa. Believing that there is something behind the murder, he seeks to uncover the truth and finds an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucracy and pharmaceutical money.įour years later, the book was adapted into a highly-acclaimed film of the same name, featuring Ralph Fiennes in the title role. It tells the story of Justin Quayle, a British diplomat whose activist wife Tessa is murdered. In 2001, David wrote ‘ The Constant Gardener’ (top ).
Following the success of this novel, David left MI6 to become a full-time author. His third novel ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ (1963) became an international best-seller, and it remains one of his best-known works.
In the 1950s and 1960s, while working for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), David Cornwell (right) began writing novels under the pen name John le Carré.