Mondovino

Business vs. personal conviction. Profit vs. art.

As with any documentary that pits the capitalist large corporations against the small producer, the viewer will invariably have to take the side of one or the other based on their own believes. This is as much a documentary of the new standardized way of doing things that globalization is bringing us, against the old traditional ways where character and the art of making things matters almost more than getting the product sold.

If you have to remember one thing from this movie, it is that the masses can no longer decide by themselves, they just follow the taste of one or a couple of critics that tend to equalize and standardize taste in the same way as MacDonalds used to do for the fast bite (something Parker himself admits to in the film against a backdrop of a Burger King sign). "It is all about image" against content as another interviewee says. That is the easy way, the standardized way. Easier than taking the time for a nice wine to mature, easier than to forge your own taste by trying and trying yet over again. Controlled branded taste is easier.

There is a glitter of hope when even some of our cousins across the ocean agree that a few people are "levelling" the taste of wines to maximize the profits and ensure a maximum of it gets sold to the "grey masses". Individuality and difference is sacrificed for the extra buck. It is nice to see that not everything or everyone is giving in to standardization, even across the ocean.

As in many other areas of today's world, dominance of a few and reduced freedom of choice impacts us all... let everyone make up their mind and decide what to go for. Too much standardization kills the mind and taste; difference brings innovation and healthy competition and will allow for choice - and not just vacuum-packed "more of the same". Standardization sells easily and a lot, and brings everyone to the same level - the lower one.

On this, I am going to open up a nice bottle and wish you a hearthy "sante".

It is truly interesting to have the opportunity to read all this disappointed reviews now, that the documentary has more than ten years. All the silly comments about the directing that wasn't enough "movie" and glamorous as expected. All the silly comments about the director that, in a "war" between the old world, European style of wine, and new world, Californian style, push for the first when it's clear that the winner is the second. Now history can tell us who is the winner...

Mondovino is an extraordinary documentary. It's self-indulgent, quirky, opinionated and overlong, but it's likely to be indespensible, because it's a devastating anatomy of the growing conflict between authentic local production (the French key word is "terroir") and the globalization of wine by which family origins are forgotten and the emphasis is on quick satisfaction, forward flavor, and standardized tastes.

The maker of this film is Jonathan Nossiter, polyglot, sommelier, happy tippler, photographer, director, and star interviewer in his documentary film – which began as a quickie, but wound up taking four years to make. Nossiter appears as fluent in Italian as he is in French, and perhaps in Spanish and Portuguese too. He's often on screen, addressing everyone in their native language, but it's his camera that's obsessed with sometimes annoying details, above all dogs.

Never mind, though; he manages to get everybody to open up to him, including many of the leading "players" of the international wine market, including those who come off the worst in Nossiter's documentary. And even those dogs turn out to have meaning. Isn't one's dog the clearest metaphor for a person's true nature?

It's obvious Nossiter likes Battista Columbu in Sardinia and Hubert de Montille in Volnay best – and it's obvious why. They're different sorts of men: Columbu is radiant and serene, de Montille querulous and acerbic. But they stand equally for what may be a vanishing world -- one where wine-making is authentic, personal, local, humane, where it's identified with place of origin not brand, done for pride of craft not profit, or – what the Michel Rollands and Mondavis want – for worldwide, nay, universe-wide market domination. Both dream openly on camera of making wine on other planets and of selling it to everyone.

De Montille comes across as mattering more than the Mondavis or any of the other aristos and plutocrats. He has only a few hectares. He makes wine that's severe, edgy, not for everyone – like himself -- and long-lasting. He's true to himself. A big focus of Mondovino is how the California Mondavis – who've already collaborated with overblown first growth bordeaux Mouton Rothchild to produce a pricey California hybrid, Opus One, since the Eighties -- recently tried to get hold of a big slice of burgundy. But a communist mayor took over the town from a socialist one and the sweetheart deal was off.

The Wine Spectator becomes, as Nossiter shows, one of the manipulators, and manipulation is an essential aspect of globalization. So too is Robert Parker, of Monkton, Maryland (who gets interviewed and his flatulent bulldogs thoroughly photographed). Parker has always been independent, but his wine ratings (and his taste) have come to wield too much power over the world wine market. French wine-makers are terrified of him, and that situation has undermined their independence. Parker, it turns out, has long been very friendly with Michel Rolland, a super-star French wine consultant (whose Mercedes limo we get to ride around in), and it turns out that the kind of heady, forward, fast-developing wine Parker likes is also what Rolland encourages wine-makers to produce – and globalization means not only eliminating small producers but homogenizing wine styles. Hence Rolland's ebullient charm is suspect, but so are Parker's so-called authenticity and independence.

The richness of Nossiter's picture comes out in the way he delineates wine families and their different, sometimes squabbling, members – most of all the de Montilles, the stubborn, feisty and wise old Hubert; his energetic son Etienne, who works for the powerful negociant, Boisset; and his daughter, Alix, in personality closer to Hubert, who decided to leave Boisset because they want her to lie -- to put her seal on wines she hasn't supervised the making of.

Nossiter's eye and ear can be devastating. The rich Staglin family in Napa Valley emerges as self-congratulatory and self-deceiving nouveaux bores. Their and other ruling wine families' condescension, outright racism, and covert or past links with the fascists and even the Nazis is another of the persistent filmmaker's gradual revelations. As one Nossiter interviewer has said, "don't get him on the subject of Berlusconi and Bush"; but Berlusconi is just fine with the wealthy Italian wine-making families.

Another sympathetic dissenter to the globalizing bandwagon is New York wine importer Neal Rosenthal, who knows the importance of terroir and the inroads against it. Rosenthal was present as a speaker after two of Film Forum's afternoon showings of Mondovino -- a local hero, of sorts, for the documentary's US premiere.

It's hard to do justice to the film or even list its full roster of figures. Michael Broadbent, longtime Wine Director at Christie's, a dry, aristocratic Englishman, once a leading authority and wine tastemaker, now eclipsed, as all are, by Parker, appears on screen to fill in the central role the English played in the growth of France's finest wines. Bernard Magrez, head of a huge Bordeaux dealership; the Antinoris of Florence (aristocrats with fascist lineage). . .the list goes on and on. One doesn't want to stop, and one sees why Nossiter's film is too long. Because it's all there in the details: this is what the controversy is about. Little things matter. Mondovino is annoying (the jumpy camera, the dog farts), but also riveting and important – a film not to be missed. And for the truly interested, there is a ten-part TV series from this material on the way.

Mondovino is a dense, rich, and complex documentary on the power struggles and major players of the "wine world" elite. It depicts the endless struggle of the old world versus the new global capitalist order. On one hand we have the older, aging, independent grape-growers and wine makers of Burgundy and Tuscany. They have a philosophy of wine as a symbol of civilization. It's not simply a commodity to them. The production and consumption of wine is a religious experience between man and the earth.

On the other side of the "war" are the major wine-producing conglomerates, such as the Mondavi family of Napa Valley or the producers of Ornelliai wine in Italy. No, these aren't bad people. They simply have a different philosophy on wine production, and they eagerly embrace the new technologies and innovations in wine fermentation, such as the "New Oak" barrels that speed up production. They also hire Michel Rollan, a world-famous "wine consultant," who tells people how they can better the quality of their wine through different production processes. But the smaller, more independent wineries see "wine consultants" as harmful to diversity, because they worry that consultants seek to make all wine the same. Just because one consultant likes or doesn't like a wine, does not mean that every pallet will agree.

Mondovino also shows the dark histories of many of the world's most powerful wine producers. Some of the most successful wine makers in France collaborated with Nazi Germany in World War II, and most of the major wine producers in Italy supported Fascism and Mussolini. There are still racist and elitist undertones in much of the wine world today. Mondovino carefully weaves together the web of land, power, politics, and wine.

This film is a lot a great bottle of wine. It's complex, multifaceted, and can't be rushed. I'm not going to lie -- Mondovino is not a short movie. It's over two hours long. But like a great wine gets better with age, so to does this movie get better as time progresses.

If you've ever wanted to know more about wine and the people who make it, this film is a great resource to learn from. "Wine people" are going to love it. But for the average Joe who just wants a good time at the theater, this probably is not the best selection for him. It's not entertaining as much as it's educational, and if you're not in the mood, you're not going to feel it. Just like how you can't enjoy a savory glass of Pinot Noir if all you want is a beer.

I saw this film at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. Since I work in the wine business, I had been quite eager to see this documentary, and I wasn't disappointed. Reportedly drawn from over 500 hours of footage, the good news is that Nossiter will be releasing not only a theatrical cut, but a ten-part, ten hour series of the film on DVD by next Christmas (ThinkFilm is distributing it). The bad news is that it's still a bit of an unwieldy beast. When it was shown in Cannes, it was close to three hours long. For Toronto, he's cut about half an hour but it still clocked in at 135 minutes. Now, for me, that's fine. I love wine and I love hearing about the controversies raging in my business. But not everyone wants that much.

Nossiter flits around the globe, from Brazil to France to California to Italy to Argentina, talking to wine makers and PR people and consultants and critics about the state of the wine world. The theme that emerges is that globalization and the undue influence of wine critic Robert Parker are forcing a kind of sameness on wine. Small local producers are either being bought up by larger conglomerates (American as well as local), or are being pressured by market forces to change their wines to suit the palate of Mr. Parker, who dictates taste to most of the American (and world) markets.

It's a complicated subject, and I can understand why Nossiter wants to let his subjects talk. There is Robert Mondavi, patriarch of the Napa wine industry, and his sons Tim and Michael, whose efforts to buy land in Languedoc faced opposition from local vignerons and government officials. There is Aimé Guibert, founder and wine maker of Daumas Gassac, iconoclastic opponent of Mondavi's plans and crusader for wines that express local terror. There is Robert Parker himself, expressing some discomfort with his influence while refusing to stop writing about the wines that he favours. There is "flying wine maker" Michel Rolland, consultant for dozens of wineries all over the world, advising them how to make Parker- friendly wines. There are many many more fascinating personalities in this documentary.

If you are a wine lover, you will want to seek out the ten-part series as well as the theatrical version of this film. But even if you're not into wine, the film is an interesting look at how the forces of globalization are changing many of the world's oldest and most established traditions. The effects on local cultures and economies cannot be ignored.

(8/10)