Mondovino (Jonathan Nossiter, 2004)
Whenever a controversial documentary rolls around, we discover just how naïve the attitude of many commentators to documentary is. As part of the process of rebuttal of any politically challenging film, critics from the right tend to peddle a false view of what documentaries are about (and this is just about always done from the right, for despite the prevailing political tendencies of the day, the widely distributed political documentaries are still generally from the left). Documentaries have to be objective, they argue: they have to put both sides of the story. I lost count of the number of times I saw people seriously argue the absurd proposition that Fahrenheit 9/11 wasn’t even properly considered a documentary because it was so focussed on arguing a particular point of view. Which is, of course, rubbish. Documentary makers have every right to argue a particular proposition, rather than somehow presenting an all-encompassing “balanced” or “objective” overview. Indeed, if we argue that they don’t have such a right, we strip documentaries of much of their point. This doesn’t mean that we have to just accept a poorly justified argument without complaint, or that we can’t engage with and criticise the argument that a documentary puts. I’m just saying that we need to move straight into that discussion, rather than attacking documentaries as propaganda simply because the filmmaker argues a single point of view. Does every film really need to be its own rebuttal?
The latest film to stir up this kind of debate is Jonathan Nossiter’s Mondovino. It is a niche-market variation on The Corporation, undertaking a survey of the state of winemaking in the era of globalisation. Nossiter takes his hand-held camera to France, Italy, the United States and South America to interview various figures in the wine industry. While the film is told through the interviews, without gratuitous methods of exposition such as voice-overs, the argument it puts is nevertheless very clear. Nossiter argues that the globalisation of wine-production is being accompanied by a homogenisation of wine, with commercial pressures eliminating the regional quirks and peculiarities that give wines their character. Two figures emerge in Nossiter’s account as key agents of this trend: Robert Parker, the wine critic whose taste has become disproportionately influential; and Michel Rolland, a wine consultant and friend of Parkers who advises winemakers on how to improve their wines. Parker burbles happily about how he revolutionised the wine world by spreading what he calls his American and democratic point of view, while Rolland – in a cheeky bit of editing – is shown advising multiple clients to “micro-oxygenate” their wines. Also featured are several California-based winemakers (notably the Mondavi family) who are contrasted with various salt-of-the-earth European winemakers. Along the way, Nossiter is able to highlight many of the personal rivalries, family dynamics, and political agendas that drive his various subjects.
Nossiter’s suspicion of globalisation – and particularly of the disproportionate influence of American viewpoints and preferences – will be familiar from other recent documentaries, such as Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar’s The Corporation. What makes Mondovino interesting is the setting within the wine world. It is the perfect backdrop to show the complexity of the relationships between progressive and conservative, new and old, rich and poor. It is often traditional elites who are the guardians of the traditions that Nossiter values, which means that the usual good-versus-bad dichotomies that crop up in this kind of film are considerably more complicated. Christies’ wine director Michael Broadbent, for example, is sympathetic to Nossiter’s point of view, and decries the influence of Robert Parker. Yet he is exactly the sort of plummy-accented cultural gatekeeper and representative of the traditional establishment that left-leaning filmmakers might normally be expected to take issue with. What’s more, his obvious rivalry with Parker (you don’t need to be a wine expert to realise that the influence of people like Broadbent has been eroded by people such as Parker) colours our perception of what he says. The subject matter of wine brings into focus a contradiction in simplistic left-versus-right politics, and particularly the complex relationship between cultural and economic trends. A left-leaning position would normally be suspicious of traditional cultural elites, and in favour of new voices; yet in Mondovino traditional outsiders such as Parker work alongside corporate forces to endanger localised tradition. It is a leftist documentary that shares a conservative’s ingrained suspicion of new money.
Nossiter has been accused of unfairness to his subjects, and the criticisms aren’t completely without foundation. One of the better anti-Mondovino commentaries I’ve seen (from someone who seems to know his stuff on both wine and film) is Alder Yarrow’s commentary at the Vinography blog (here), and I can’t argue with some of his points. It is true, for example, that Nossiter’s camera does sometimes wander in a manner that is disrespectful to his subjects: while it often picks up interesting details, it is too often at the expense of the dignity of his interviewees. However, even a criticism as nuanced and thought-through as Yarrow’s shows traces of the kind of simplistic approach to films that often characterises replies to documentaries. For example, Yarrow cites the way Nossiter cuts away to a shot of a pool-cleaning device during an interview with a Califonian winemaker, in a manner that is arguably unflattering to its subject. This kind of juxtaposition is often highlighted in denunciations of documentaries, with those critical of a film painting such edits as manipulative: but this is no more “manipulative” than structuring the words of a sentence in a certain order to create meaning. The juxtaposition of two different shots to communicate an idea is simply how the language of cinema works: that it’s more elegant and subtle than saying something outright in voiceover does not make it inherently unfair or sneaky. Furthermore, audiences are not the gormless receptors that some critics seem to think. I’m sure a section of the audience will chortle along in self-satisfied leftie smugness at the cutaway of the pool cleaner (they certainly did at the screening I attended): there will be a section of any audience that wants to agree with the filmmaker. But whether audiences agree with Nossiter or not, the point is that they will see that kind of shot for exactly what it is – an overt comment by the director, and basically a mild joke – rather than somehow being duped by it.
The camerawork in the film has also been the subject of criticism on aesthetic grounds. The film was shot using hand-held digital video cameras, and the frame bobs and weaves drunkenly. Even more distractingly, there are occasional extreme zooms on interviewees, used to re-establish focus. It’s not always pretty, and it hasn’t gone down well with steadfastly anti-handheld critics such as David Stratton (see, for example, his argument with Margaret Pomerantz about it here). There is obvious room for improvement of the digital format – both in terms of technique and technology – but Mondovino also highlights the enormous potential of the equipment. One of the film’s chief virtues is the intimacy of its interviews, and the way in which it places you fully within its locations, and these virtues can be directly attributed to the use of the digital cameras. Many of the locations in Mondovino are quite beautiful – wineries are inherently photogenic, and many are in charming regions of France – and the photography gives the film the feel of lived experience, rather than the more conventionally picturesque but distancing effect that picture-postcard 35mm photography tends to bring. A central theme in the film is the notion of terroir: the “sense of place” in a wine. It is apt, then, that a sense of place is so important within Mondovino itself, with the locations (various wineries, Michel Rolland’s Mercedes, Robert Parker’s house) often seeming to act as extension of the characters.
In truth, the film’s most serious flaw is neither its politics nor its style: it’s the running time. Being so interview-driven and complex, the film is very dense, and at 135 minutes it becomes something of a slog. Like last year’s The Corporation, Mondovino will be best served by television and other home formats that allow it to be absorbed in several sittings (and indeed, a ten-part television version is to follow). Taking in the whole film at once is rather like drinking a whole bottle of wine in one sitting: as good as it is, it is probably better enjoyed in moderation.
Originally published at InFilm Australia.
Related
For my interview with Jonathon Nossiter, click here.