Red Obsession

I'm a wine person.

I have consumed, studied, taught and debated the topic for almost 30 years now. I love the stuff. But... watching this film reminded me how wound up we wine-people are in our own world.

Although I found the documentary interesting and important to know, I also recognise that this film grossed less than US$10,000- at the box office. Now, I don't know what the budget was to make this film, but who in their right mind thought that this would be a good idea for a theatrical release? I'm guessing that enough people got together and convinced themselves that this would work. And secured enough funding from (almost surely) a wealthy wine-lover.

No rational film producer would ever have looked at the script and gone 'Yeah, images of French châteaux, and celebrities in the wine field will be a huge hit! Let's get Rusty to narrate and we've got it made!!!'

If you're just starting to develop an interest in wine, this should be mandatory watching. Enthusiasts already know most of the content, and will probably bemoan the lack of further detail. But if wine isn't your thing, you'll really wish you'd spent the 75 minutes on another film.

This is an Australian-produced doco, looking at the history of wines from Bordeaux.

It is 75 minutes long.

After 75 minutes, I was aware that they have been making wines in Bordeaux since the Romans brought the vines; that Napoleon III had the wines graded in 1855 and the grades given remain to this day; that conditions come together for a great vintage about every 20 years; that wine is bought as an investment; that Americans have stopped buying it but the Chinese now do; that some French are sniffily xenophobic about dealing with the Chinese and that if the Chinese ever stop buying, the market may collapse.

Those facts took 75 minutes to explain. 75 very long minutes.

Some nice aerial photography. And looking at beautifully designed and constructed French chateaux is always easy on the eye.

The film had a nice, laconic commentary from Russell Crowe whose smoky, tobacco-enhanced voice fitted the subject well.

But it was all just too superficial, too under-researched with not enough of interest to fill the film's time span. Some more history would have been welcome; the Great French Wine Blight of the late 1850s post-dated Napoleon III's gradings – didn't the blight make them obsolete? This question wasn't addressed but would seem fundamental to an evaluation of Bordeaux. Still, I'm sure had I gone to France's bucolic beauty spots to research such a film, I too would have been so distracted drinking the stuff I'd have forgotten the reason for the visit.

It's technically not bad... I just get frustrated when documentaries seem to stumble into really fascinating territory and then quickly back out to go back to what they (likely) planned.

Exploring what drives people to bid money on things like super expensive wine (some of whom admit they don't even drink it!) is potentially really fascinating. Is it appealing like gambling? Is it selfish? It is an empty display of wealth that, upon reflection, such auction participants would feel guilt about?

And the notion of fraudulent luxury goods? Genuinely fascinating! Questions about whether not knowing the difference means the real things are meaningless, whether you can be happy with fakes, whether it turns people off even trying to get the genuine things...

But nah. The documentary is solid but entirely too straightforward to be more than sporadically (maybe even unintentionally) interesting in an intense way for more than a few moments here or there.

Oh well.

I like to enjoy a decent wine. I don't drink a Château Latour or a Château Lafite Rothschield simply because I can't afford them, but If I could, I believe I would once in a while delight myself with such an exquisite occupation. It is strange however, after watching this movie, that my sympathy and respect for red wine didn't increase. In fact, it decreased for a moment.

This documentary is totally hollow. You squeeze it and nothing comes out. You learn virtually nothing about nothing and you are fed with the usual clichés and prejudices about the new economic giant known as China, its people and the globalized world.

The cinematography is also one of the most boring I remember to have witnessed in years. This incipient self-centered director, insists in punching you over and over, again and again, with bird views of French chateaus and never ending vineyards, intercalated with interviews so empty, so senseless, so snobbish, that you start to feel a certain discomfort, even disgust.

Everything tastes very thin, very superficial, very made out of plastic, unlike the Bordeaux wines that deserved a much serious and better documented approach.

The only positive note about this waste of time was the narrator's voice, lent by Russel Crowe.

I was only mildly interested in watching this documentary and turned it on expecting very little. After all, I rarely ever drink French wines and just don't have much interest in them. However, I soon realized that in many ways the film isn't really about wines at all- -it's all a metaphor for the sudden and very dramatic rise in the Chinese economy and their subsequent buying power. It also, in many ways, is much like the entrance of Americans into the world economy in the 20th century--when some folks were more interested in spending their money on some hot commodity instead of what is quality. In the film, the Chinese elite seem too interested in specific famous labels as opposed to actually DRINKING the wines-- and as a result of folks stockpiling the wines and paying top dollar, the wine prices on the 'best' wines are astronomical and no one can afford to drink them! All in all, a fascinating film that really gets you to think.