evan rodriguez
The spoiler warning exists solely because I will discuss specific details. Not because there is anything like a dramatic arc to be spoiled here.My friends and I watched this one night during our weekly wine club. It was unanimously panned and long enough that by the time everyone was sick of it there was still 45 minutes left to openly mock it. The movie is sprawling and unfocused. Unfortunately, it does not appear that it will age as well as, say, a wine. Its topic, globalization, was a much more ripe one when filming of this began. Perhaps in this regard the movie's focus on the many eccentric parts once felt more fresh. Pre-Thomas Friedman, Al Gore, the rise of the global economy and global catastrophe, perhaps it was much more novel to realize how a village in France and blowhards in California (the movie's perception) could be so intertwined and yet maintain their eccentricities. Unfortunately, in 2008 it feels stale and its large scope seems unfocused and prone to repetition and rambling.In fact, I would not hesitate to give this documentary a lower score but the film maker's camera antics occasionally provide some real, if non- productive, laughter. (Spoilers) Examples include zooming over a woman's shoulder as she talks, to the presumably more interesting goldfish in the background, zooming in on the nostril of a winegrower waxing eloquent of wine-making as art whilst considerable mucus oozes from his nose. Allowing a California couple to provide an in depth tour of their stucco 'mcmansion' while sounding like they are describing Versailles is also hilarious. All of which are kind of mean and a lot of work for their relative contributions to the story.
Simon Peters
eddy_mercury in his comments misses the point. The film maker is regretting the standardisation of taste that has occurred because of the way in which the value of the American market in wine has led to a steady and stealthy narrowing of choice when it comes to the style of wine. Nobody would deny that the standard of wine has improved. Nobody would deny the French have been too arrogant for too long. However it is to be regretted that the American public as a whole is so sheep like in following the taste of Robert Parker. He know what he likes and the great American public, which doesn't, is happy to say "Yeah and I like it too". Unfortunately what you will end up with is less choice. Look at what passes for cheese in America, and compare it with the wealth of choice that is available still in the Old World. Do you really want wines that will be like Kraft slices compared with Brie? Trust me, not all wines have to be big tasting reds barrelled in new oak, and giving endless, unchallenging, "easy-drinking". What next - Château Yquem Lite?
eddy_mercury
An interesting movie, but what a load of hooey! The movie completely ignores the fact that in blind tastings, French critics who dismiss the pretensions of the Napa vintners and claim to prefer the pure, natural taste of terroir, choose the American wines. This movie is about hype all right, but it's not Mondavi; its about the pretentious claim of many a traditional winery that only centuries of winemaking culture and knowledge of terroir can lead to a good product. This is about as ridiculous as the claim that good bread can only be produced in certain traditional locales, i.e., that a Parisian baguette can only be good if it is from Paris. I'm glad to say that both good bread and good wine can be found in many, many places, and more every year. And speaking from experience, the Chilean and Argentinian wines of 30 years ago were dreadful! Nothing has been lost in adopting international standards for their wine industry.
Chris Knipp
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.
