BLIND AMBITION
Australia, 2021, 96 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Warwick Moss and Rob Cohen.
There are two principal audiences for this quite engaging documentary. The first audience would be those who are wine-lovers. The film gives them the opportunity for some vicarious wine-tasting as they follow the careers of four sommeliers, information about the world competition in Burgundy for wine tasters, preparation and training for the competition, the coaches, a tour of vineyards in France and Germany, the competition itself.
The second audience, who might not be interested in wine at all, are those who are concerned about refugees around the world in the 21st-century, especially African refugees and, more particularly, refugees from Zimbabwe in the first decade of the 21st-century, refugees from the ever worsening Mugabe-Zimbabwe, stranded at the borders with South Africa, being smuggled into South Africa to make their lives there, sometimes with their wives, often having to leave their children behind in Zimbabwe till they made good.
And, there is the audience who is interested in both themes.
The focus of the film is on four Zimbabwean men who decided to leave their home country, taking their wives but leaving their children behind until better times, who experience the brutality of the border groups, smuggled by train and find their way to Cape Town. Each of them has made quite a success of his life – each of them learning wine tasting even though there is minimal wine in Zimbabwe. They become expert and are employed as sommeliers in top restaurants. We meet them as a group. We meet them each personally. And we see Joseph’s mother back in Zimbabwe with a newspaper article acclaiming him on her wall.
The men become the team for Zimbabwe at the 2017 competition in Burgundy. Quite an amount of time is spent on their working together, pooling their gifts at tasting and understanding the wine. And they have a South African trainer who explains situations and his work to the audience. He is also the trainer of Team South Africa and wants the two teams to bond rather than be arch-competitive rivals. Money is raised around the world to get them to France, social media support and affirmation.
In France, they have a coach who previously was the winner of world competitions, Denis. There is quite some introduction to him, his speaking tongue-in-cheek to the camera, yet a pompous man, proud of his not being liked! He accompanies the men on their trip around France and Germany but clashes with the South African coach.
Then, the competition, 12 wines to be tasted and identified, the tension as the four sit around their table with Denis. At times they are quite a riled by his interventions! We see the discussions, the tasting, the tension, the time limits.
The team hope that they will not come last and, surprisingly, Italy comes last. They come 23rd. But, they return home to great acclaim, symbols for Zimbabwe. And, at the end, quite an affirmation of each of them as they produce their own wines, or go to Hong Kong to raise money for charity, and one migrating with his family to the Netherlands and becoming an importer of African wines.
More cheer. They go back in 2018 – and improved by nine places!
(Interestingly, this is a Screen Australia production.)
