Scenes from The Constant Gardener

I really liked the cinematography in  ‘The Constant Gardener’. One of my favorite scenes was when Justin returns to London and goes back to Tessa’s house. I liked the way the movie juxtaposed the scenes of Justin walking in with Tessa, and then walking in alone. It made his grief seem so much more real. The movie adopts the juxtaposing technique often, even in the scene towards the end where Justin talks to Tessa before dying. I found it very effective, especially in places when they talked about gory things but didn’t quite show them explicitly. When Justin is being warned to not follow Tessa’s path, he’s told about how Arnold was tortured to death. Just the glimpse of Arnold hanging upside down was enough to send shivers down my spine.

On thinking about the question of representation trumping the actual message of the movie, I think it’s really important to recognize that representation of anything is distorted through the eyes of the one producing the image. It would be hard to find a movie which depicted everything perfectly and that could not be criticized. So if we can look beyond the very obvious flaws of a movie, and try to absorb the message the movie is trying to send across, cinema becomes a very powerful tool to bring about change.

African First Ladies Health Summit

I came across this article on Huffingtonpost.com today about the African First Ladies Health Summit where 22 first ladies of African countries convened in Los Angeles to discuss the problems facing women and children in their countries. 

Some of the first ladies called for proved education and health practices including

improved nutrition for children and pregnant mothers, clean water, sanitation infrastructure and inexpensive tools such as insecticide-treated bed nets to help combat malaria. The first ladies at the gathering Tuesday all called for better education for girls. 

The first ladies have a strong focus on health issues facing their continent and have even formed the the charitable group the US Doctors For Africa and African Synergy.  Of the problems facing the continent, the articles notes that 

HIV/AIDS remains one of the toughest problem faced by Africa. The continent is home to nearly 70 percent of all adults and 80 percent of all children living with HIV/AIDS, according to the nonprofit US Doctors For Africa. Other infectiousdiseases such as malaria and tuberculosis have also plagued the continent.

This article and summit were particularly interesting in light of viewing The Constant Gardener.  Just the thought of experimental drug testing being done on people who are unaware of the trial medicine is horrifying but it seems entirely possible that a drug corporation would take advantage of the large number of infected people under the guise of trying to help them.