THE AGRONOMIST (Jonathan Demme)

Reviewed: September 22, 2002

Note: This review references a "work-in-progress" cut of the film.

Admiration, not pleasure, would be the optimal noun required to describe my The Agronomist experience. Since 1993 Jonathan Demme (Oscar winning The Silence of the Lambs helmer) has been surreptitiously working on a (largely) VHS documentary portrait of his friend, Haitian radio journalist and human rights activist Jean Dominique. Doc's illumination is twofold: (1) Shining light on the perfidy inextricably woven in Haiti's tragic historic fabric; (2) Shining light on Dominique -- a magnetic, crucial man -- in all his noble glory.

Agronomy is a branch of agriculture dealing with field-crop production and soil management, aka the line of work Dominique was originally destined to enter. He was supposed to be one of Haiti's upper-crust elite but such self-serving work was not in the cards. Here is a man whose entire life ended up being predicated on helping others, on exposing corruption, on -- via his revolutionarily independent Haitian radio station -- working to do whatever possible to clean up Haiti's terribly violent stasis. "He was an agronomist without land," one character remarks in the film, an apt metaphor to extend throughout Dominique's life as his radio station had to be frequently aborted during dangerous, tumultuous Haitian times (one chilling anecdote Dominique recites tells of the time his station was fired upon so voraciously his listeners could actually hear the gunshots).

Suffice to say, none of this difficult material is entertaining (once again nor should it be; forgive me if it sounds like I'm damning with faint praise). Make no mistake though: this documentary -- an eye-opening experience through and through -- is here to enlighten and perhaps actually make a fucking difference.

The work-in-progress cut I saw is also not without its flaws. Even at ninety minutes the film drags a bit in the middle. The filmmakers told me one of the never-ending difficulties of their editing process is finding the balance between tiresome exposition and explaining enough Haitian history for the context of Dominique's story to make sense. They've done a mostly good job, but perhaps a little nipping here and tucking there would be of help. There's also a few editing flourishes I detested. Jokey freeze-frames and triple takes and zooming title cards play amateurish and inappropriate, undermining the gravity of the story being told.

Still, this is an important film and it needs to be seen as soon as possible. Demme and company should stop tinkering around (they've been working on The Agronomist for the past nine years) and try to get this distributed before the truly abysmal Haitian situation gets any worse.

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