The Wine Importer comments

An Apology to Jonathan Nossitor

I finally got to see Mondovino last night after condemning the movie for months.

I want to apologize to Jonathan Nossitor. I have been skeptical about the film without seeing it, in the grand tradition of American know-nothingness, but finally got out to see it here in Portland, Oregon. This is a very wine conscious city and the film was playing at a drive-in theatre in Beaverton, a swank suburb housing countless Nike and Adidas executives.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I regret that Hubert de Montille was cast as Jesus Christ and that his daughter Alix was featured as Mary Magdalene. Off hand, I can think of 50 other vignerons who better fit the role. Of course, de Montille turns out to be a great cinema presence and has a future as the French James Earl Jones. Great voice and great presence.

The choice of de Montille as the personification of peasant integrity, the same de Montille who is a successful Dijon lawyer and who recently told Pierre Rovani that September 11th was the greatest day of his life, is plain silly, even if it made cinematic sense. Hubert de Montille is the personification of Hubert de Montille and little else. Unfortunately, his central role in the film opens Nossitor to attack as being too broad a propagandist. And this is too bad, because the points made by the film are compelling and largely true even if the choice of narrative vehicle is unfortunate.

The film is fun and revealing, especially if you are an afficionado of hand-held cameras. All the scenes with Michel Rolland are hysterical and the viewer is astonished that Rolland is so taken in by his own Rollandmania that he cannot imagine that Nossitor is setting him up. Every so often, you almost feel pity for the poor Rolland, who delights in looking arrogant, foolish and imperial.

There are beautiful scenes with a peasant in Sardinia who speaks lyrically of his wine and life. The Mondavi family is made out to be too sinister, but again, Nossitor is only dealing in broad strokes here and not the subtleties. But the contrast between the Sardinian family and the Rollands, Mondavis, Parkers, Antinoris and Frescobaldis says it all. It is amazing to see the lavish estates of the wine aristocracy, enormous winery/plantations that they imagine look like heaven but which are more reminiscent of military fortresses.

I can't imagine how someone who is not a seasoned wine geek would understand what is going on in the film. Nossitor imagines that by painting everything in broad strokes he is making the moral issues simpler, but frankly, I think the film would have been more compelling if Nossitor had better showed the complexities of the wine world rather than the shadow world of monopolists. Even with this limitation, the film is a lot of fun and a valuable contribution.

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Joe, I knew you were the kind of guy who refreshes your position based on new evidence. That's why your writing is original and fascinating.

"the points made by the film are compelling and largely true even if the choice of narrative vehicle is unfortunate"

I agree ... as an wine-academy initiate. But as you suggest, "our" (wine obsessed people) positions on the movie seem tied in knots over the issue of how "they" (regular folks) will read, misread or even abandon the film. I don't think this is fair to "them." "They" can be trusted to reason through the case Nossiter presents. From the inside it seems like Nossiter miscast about half of the roles, but he still got the story dead-on somehow.

Who are we to say what's important to viewers who don't follow wine? I assume non wine geeks want a good story, and if it's to be about wine, a story which is inclusive and illustrates the "importance" of wine together with the fact that we all can play a role in its future. I left that movie moved myself, thinking wine is fun again, and that I won't accept the conventional wisdom that "novices" WANT corporate crap. What a relief from the haze of gratuitous, commercial PR mongering that marinates most wine commentary (including, occasionally, my own.)

Just look at the praise the film received from the non-wine-critic critics (didn't Ebert like it?.) By far the best review of Mondovino is to be found on Reason.com by Kerry Howley (http://www.reason.com/links/links033005.shtml)

PS: I hear your products may be in my state again sometime soon. I can't wait!

- putnam (guest) 5-30-2005 6:41 pm

What did you drink with the movie?
- anonymous (guest) 5-31-2005 7:28 pm

apology accepted
- jn (guest) 6-04-2005 1:28 am

I have finally seen this movie and my opinion is probably too mixed to be posted safely on any wine board. So of course I chose to do it here. Most of the criticisms seem to be apt enough. Montille is as absurd a hero as the Mondavis are villains. Does the film mean to take apart Guibert by siding with him over the Mondavi invasion and then having him look blankly when he was asked about why he was OK with Depardieu?

Buried within the film's sillier ideological positions, though, is an interesting idea. It comes out in the interview with the Sardinian winemaker and the woman, whose name I forget, who started making wine after her husband died. Both of them view the wine they make as part of their experience of living in a specific place and among specific people, as a product of their history and civilization. Nossitor's notion that this is leftist is absurd of course. It's the definition of a conservative attachment to tradition. But there is little doubt that it leads to an experience of wine that stands in pointed contrast to looking at it as a product for disinterested evaluation. Parker represents that position in the film, and he represents it fairly well.

The problem is that only people who will do the work of sharing the background of a given wine will really get that insight into it, in other words the people who live there and others who decide to fall in love with the area. And most of these people only know their own wines that well and in that way. I suppose everybody should love one or two wines this way but it's impossible for most of us to know very many that way, maybe only devoted importers.

One final note. The film is unfair to California airheads. Such people can always be made to make fools of themselves. But just because the Staglins have probably never read a book, think having a table like the godfather's is a good thing, and have a notion of noblesse oblige that makes Marie Antoinette look like a Marxist doesn't mean that they don't have as rich a sense of their wine and where it comes from as the guy from Sardinia. It just means they are California airheads with the self-awareness of a grasshopper.
- Jonathan Loesberg (guest) 7-24-2005 1:32 pm

Thank you professor.
- Joe Dressner 7-24-2005 8:16 pm

You're welcome. I was just fulfilling my previously asserted obligation to see the movie and have a vehement opinion about it.
- Jonathan Loesberg (guest) 7-25-2005 3:42 pm

On May 19, Pierre Rovani posted (on e-Robertparker.com) a complete explanation of the events surrounding M de Montilles unfortunate statement about 9/11. It's dangerous to make casual references to such serious incidents. Without a full understanding of the situation, it's easy to blow things out of context.

What M de Montille said was deplorable, and no excuses can really take back the gravity of his statement. Just the same, it is unfair to use such incomplete information to portray a person's character.
- Paul Courtright (guest) 8-12-2005 4:59 am

I don't follow Parker's board well enough. The overall point I'm making, even outside of the September 11th remark, is the de Montille is barely the personification of peasant integrity. It is ridiculous to present him as such. When organizing a movie around icons, it is best to be sure of the quality of each symbol.
- Joe Dressner 10-14-2005 9:59 am

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