As documentaries go, it’s number one on my list of ten* favorites. I’ve been telling everyone I possibly can in meatspace to see it. Before you tune me out, give me a second.
Mondovino is not a wine film. Yes, it’s about the wine industry, but more importantly, it’s about certain characters, certain people — unforgettable people — in the industry; it’s about culture, it’s about politics, and it’s about society: old world vs. new, France vs. America, terroir vs. chemistry, history and heritage vs. globalization.
Skillfuly crafted by feature-film director Jonathan Nossiter, Mondovino is a loosely woven series of portraits of both influential and unknown characters in the wine industry. Through these portraits, Nossiter — himself a one-time sommelier who recently said of his former profession “it’s one step up from trained seal” — reveals the inner machinations of an industry that most of us rarely even think about, an industry which, in fact, most of us (yours truly included) are happily ignorant about.
Mondovino takes us all over the world of wine (seven countries and three continents, to be exact): from a rustic vineyard in Sardinia (home to my favorite character in the film, Battista Columbu, whose dissertation on the ethos of wine-making is quite moving) to the powerhouse Mondavi vineyards in California to the hut of a poverty-stricken wine grower in Argentina. At the core of the film is the struggle between the “evil empire” wineries and the “mom-and-pop” wineries, and the controversy that errupted when Mondavi tried breaking its way into the French wine industry (and subsequently decided to make a land-grab in Italy after its defeat in France). The personalities that orbit this issue are wine producers, wine importers, wine critics, and yes, even wine consultants.
These personalities, these characters — yeah, it’s not a film, but trust me, everyone in the film is a character — reveal themselves through unscripted, unrehearsed dialogue. There is no narration to the film, and the characters are not simply talking heads. In fact, rather than the camera staying focused on them at all times during an interview, our point of view wanders on occasion…much as, let’s face it, many of our eyes wander during a lengthy conversation. While at first an annoying distraction, the wandering eye of the photographer (also Nossiter) quickly becomes one of the films more endearing traits. There’s something to be said for a camera that follows a dog’s antics while its owner is talking (in fact, the dogs seem to reveal something about the characters, too, but that’s just my interpretation).
Not surprisingly, because the film’s personalities are left to their own devices and allowed to speak to the camera unfettered (the film is two-plus hours, with a rumored 10-hour series to debut this winter on DVD), Mondovino and Nossiter have come under heavy fire from all sides of the industry. And usually when someone strikes a nerve, it’s because they’re discussing a topic that some would rather not have aired. Whether the wine industry is really being overrun by an evil empire of simplistic, uncultured American tastes, or whether the old guard of the industry are simply struggling against the inevitability of globalization, Mondovino raises some interesting questions — and leaves them up to you to answer.
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