"Red Obsession" Provides a Heady Buzz

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 28 August 2013 04:07

Written by Laura Blum

So, the tipsiest we'll get this season may be from a documentary about wine. From its opening pan of a cellar synced to "I Put A Spell on You," Red Obsession hints that we're about to be possessed by something pretty heady.

The wine trade already has.

Directors Warwick Ross and David Roach begin their beguiling film in the Bordeaux region of western France. As we learn from narrator Russell Crowe, nature and two millennia of experience in fermenting grapes have conferred perfection on its terroirs and passion on its winemakers.

"You need to bring so much love to your vines," coos vigneron Christian Moeuix, who has just helped a lunch party of seven polish off three magnums. With kindred devotion, a competitor from Château Palmer romances his varietals, "I know your soul; I know your character..." Even Francis Ford Coppola rhapsodizes about Bordeaux's "miraculous...works of art," declaring, "Napoleon and Jefferson had tried it, so you're one with history."

As a symbol of heritage, refinement, power and wealth, Bordeaux bottles carry ultimate status in the global wine market. And no place is this more consequential than in brand-conscious China, where buying the world's finest wine is buying "face."

Shot three years after the world financial crisis, Red Obsession charts the shift in global power as the Western economies falter and "the dragon awakes." What begins as a valentine to vin rouge becomes a primer in commerce.

The land of the 60s Cultural Revolution now has more billionaires than the US, and the film handpicks a few for us to meet. One tycoon who made his fortune making sex toys lines his walls with Bordeaux's coveted treasures. He's good for a chuckle, but we fairly swoon as a socialite recalls bidding $1.5 million for a bottle of Lafite at Christie's. We get either thirsty or goosebumps contemplating the implications for anyone else on the planet who may want a nice glass of Bordeaux.

And that's one of the punchlines: the tipple is too pricy to imbibe. Since 1982, we learn, Bordeaux wine has outperformed the Dow, the FTSE -- even gold. It's hard not to hope that the bubble will have burst by the credit roll.

As the film moves deeper into issues of supply and demand, we journey to such outposts as the Silk Road town of Turfan near the Mongolian border. There in the craggy desert, as elsewhere around China, vineyards are springing up overnight. We get a jolt contemplating the projected needs of Chinese consumers in the not-so-distant future, when the entire global production of wine won't suffice to go around.

Another sobering thought is the burgeoning -- and centuries-aged -- local practice of honoring creators with knock-offs of their work. On the lighter side of fakery, there's Château Changyu-AFIP just outside of Beijing. This fairytalish winery may not be as noble as the French estate that inspired it, but it lends the film yet another welcome moment of comedic relief from what might otherwise feel like an economics lecture.

Red Obsession is not only jam-packed with nutrients, it goes down more smoothly than most of the 2013 film crop and leaves us with a hell of a buzz. 

"Out of the Clear Blue Sky" Illuminates Cantor Fitzgerald

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 27 August 2013 14:15

Written by Laura Blum

Out of the Clear Blue Sky is hardly the first documentary about 9/11, but its chronicle of bond trader Cantor Fitzgerald tells a uniquely epic tale of a corporate family. All of the 658 employees who began that dreadful day at company headquarters on the World Trade Center's top five floors lost their lives, representing nearly a quarter of the attack's total casualties.  

Among the company's 302 survivors was CEO Howard Lutnick, who arrived -- at the moment the planes did -- after accompanying his son on his first day of kindergarten. Lutnick's brother, Gary, wasn't so fortunate. Nor was filmmaker Danielle Gardner's brother, Douglas. Her personal connection permeates the movie and adds to its raw intimacy.

One week later, the erstwhile hero was being compared with Al-Qaeda. With entire corporate divisions wiped out, Cantor dropped missing employees from the payroll. Sympathizers saw the decision as a necessary evil to salvage what was left of the firm and generate cash to support the living, while detractors vilified it as unspeakable act by a cold-hearted Judas. In a media frenzy of denunciation, Lutnick was now the persona non-grata of the hour. 

 

With some 6,000 mourners to attend to and a decimated company to run, he had more urgent concerns than his Q rating. Out of the Clear Blue Sky plunges into the murky grey Ground Zero and beyond to chart how the employees, the chief executive and the company itself rose from the ashes in hopes of rebirth. In the process, it explores poignant questions. What does it take to bring back a business from near death? Which is more ethical, letting that business go or focusing on the bottom line? 

 

Within 14 years of the catastrophe, Cantor Fitzgerald fulfilled its word to its employees, an $180 million obligation. Another $17 million went to a crisis relief fund managed by Lutnick’s stalwart sister, Edie. And judging by Gardner's interviews with surviving loved ones and colleagues as well as footage of gatherings over the course of nearly a dozen years, the emotional support provided by the forum can only be valued at priceless. 

 

Special screenings of the film are scheduled in selected theaters around the country on September 11 at 7 pm.