I’ve proposed before a pet thesis that the documentary revival of the last couple of years represents, among other things, the return of totality to documentary filmmaking. By which I mean that documentarist have renewed interest in seeing large-scale political economic relations through the particulars of everyday life. Not every filmmaker is a would-be Joris Ivens or Frederick Wiseman, of course, but the difference between these and the “quirky” cinema and earnest issue-activism of the 90s is instructive.
Mondovino certain fits this thesis. It’s about the global wine industry - and one particular controversy over “Californiafication” of taste in wine making. I know nothing about wine yet found it an engaging watch. Its argument was built up slowly but never stated; the film introduces player after player in the controversy in careful sequence, building outward from battles in Languedoc and Burgundy to global growers, financiers and critics. There are some problems with its argument; in particular, the lack of voice given to actual consumers of wine seems a telling omission. The American corporations and critics may be evincing a false populism in universalizing the taste of New Money (the Northern California bourgeoisie comes off particularly bad here, in part because they think they’re laidback everymen when they’re not), but I gave credence to their claim that they were representing the consumer’s tastes. At the very least the film can so unproblematically present its thesis that Wine Media reflects corporate interests thesis only by ignoring the possibility that wine magazines don’t have to be read by anyone, nor was wine consumed as much by Americans as it is today. The real revolution had taken place somewhere besides Mondavi or Wine Spectator.
The strength of the film, however, lies in its sociological gaze. At every point, the large scale is in the small-scale detail. Mondovino is almost as much a study in decor as it is in wine, with the different mise-en-scene signalling shifting social milieu. The contrast between 18th century villages and the very French hyperindustrial antisceptic modernism, between the faux-Italian villa style of Napa and the impoverished aristocracy of Italy works in tandem with the overall mapping of capital and its effects.
The biggest drawback is shoddy filmmaking. At every turn, the filmmakers rebel against talking head interview documentary format with nervous tics and roving camera: the cameraperson is constantly obscuring the social actors from view, ignoring their testimony by focusing on extraneous characters, lending screen time to completely insignificant material, or else being lead by the subject matter instead of actively framing it. At one particular aesthetic low point, the camera follows a finger as it points across a map.
All of this impatience exacerbates the slapdash quality of the handheld digital camerawork. Pans become unrecognizable, ordinary shots dizzying.
And this documentary won prizes at several major film festivals. These faults made me lament a film culture which lets documentary off the hook for aesthetics if the politics are acceptable or the subject matter is interesting. Let’s hope that the return of totality doesn’t mean the triumph of content over form.
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