Monday, September 13, 2004

Mondovino

by James McNally on September 13, 2004

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,TIFF

Mondovino

Mondovino (USA/France, dir­ector Jonathan Nossiter): 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 wine­makers 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.

Mondovino

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 wine­maker of Daumas Gassac, icon­o­clastic opponent of Mondavi’s plans and cru­sader for wines that express local terroir. 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 wine­maker” 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(8/10)

Tagged as: #tiff04, globalization, wine

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Les Choristes

by James McNally on September 13, 2004

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Les Choristes

Les Choristes (France/Switzerland, dir­ector Christophe Barratier): Les Choristes is an unabashedly sen­ti­mental film that reminded me very much of Italian films Ciao Professore! and espe­cially Cinema Paradiso. It tells the story of a failed musi­cian named Clement Mathieu who finds him­self taking a job in des­per­a­tion as the super­visor of a reform school in 1949. The school is run by an author­it­arian tyrant and the stu­dents are a bunch of delin­quents who taunt him imme­di­ately with shouts of “Baldie!” and “Bullet Head!”. Mathieu decides to begin a choir as a sort of pro­ject to help with dis­cip­line and soon has the respect of the stu­dents. He also dis­covers a boy with a remark­able voice and does his best to encourage this gift while har­bouring a crush on the boy’s mother. This is not totally ori­ginal stuff, but the story is told well and the per­form­ances are strong, most espe­cially by Gérard Jugnot as the rumpled and lonely Mathieu. The resemb­lances to Cinema Paradiso are quite strong. Both films use a flash­back struc­ture. In Cinema Paradiso, a famous film dir­ector is called home to his vil­lage to attend the funeral of his old mentor, the pro­jec­tionist at the local cinema. In Les Choristes, it’s a famous orchestra con­ductor, called home to bury his mother, but the event trig­gers a visit from an old school chum who unfolds the tale of their music teacher Mathieu. The film is a “man behind the man” tribute to those quiet souls who push others to great­ness while often not feeling very suc­cessful in their own lives. As someone who studied to be a teacher, I love this kind of story, even if it is not always fash­ion­able in “ser­ious” cinema circles. The emo­tions are real and are helped tre­mend­ously by a fab­ulous musical score and beau­tiful choral pieces.

The dir­ector was proud to be presenting the film in Toronto after its huge suc­cess in France, where it sold eight mil­lion tickets and a mil­lion copies of its soundtrack CD. We were also treated to a per­form­ance after the screening of two of the songs from the film by another boy’s choir, and the standing ova­tion was almost inevitable.

Film’s Web Site: www.leschoristes-lefilm.com

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: france, music

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