I first heard the question posed by Jeffrey Hart, the great professor of English at Dartmouth (and a senior editor of National Review): If a work of art is mistaken in its social analysis, can it still be considered well-wrought, perhaps even beautiful? Jeff was discussing Oliver Goldsmith’s long poem of the mid-eighteenth century, “The Deserted Village,” but the question came to mind yesterday evening while the missus and I were watching the new movie, “The Constant Gardener.”

Goldsmith’s poem represents an extended attack on the first stirrings of the industrial revolution: “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey/Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.” We now know, of course, that despite the ugliness it visited on much of the English countryside, the industrial revolution enriched and enlivened the country—and, ultimately, during the Pax Britannica, much of the world. Goldsmith got it wrong. On the other hand, what a poem! More than 400 lines of faultless rhythm and diction, perfect rhymes, and arresting imagery.

Likewise “The Constant Gardener.” The movie, which is based on a novel of the same name by John le Carre, rests on a premise that is, simply, ridiculous: Giant, rapacious drug companies, eager to rush to market a new treatment for tuberculosis, conduct clinical trials on unsuspecting Africans. The companies know, of course, that the treatment causes dangerous side effects, but they handle this problem by bribing senior officials in the British Foreign Office—and by murdering anyone who refuses to be bought. Only someone utterly ignorant of the regulatory and legal regimes that drug companies face could believe in such a premise long enough to write a screenplay.

But if you’re willing to grant the premise, the movie comes alive: Brilliant acting; editing that moves mesmerizingly back and forth in time, from flashbacks to the present; and, in the African scenes, a palpable, heart-breakingly beautiful sense of place. “The Constant Gardener” is both a marvelous artistic achievement and a ridiculous way to spend two hours.