Film Review: Agronomist

Directed by Jonathan Demme

ThinkFilm Inc.

Director Jonathan Demme has a vast portfolio (The Silence of the Lambs, Beloved and a forthcoming Gulf War-based remake of The Manchurian Candidate) behind him and, it would seem from just glancing that immense composite list, little time to dwell on the historical particulars and hardships of tracking down footage for a documentary. Yet, in his portrait of Jean Dominique, a Haitian activist unknown to most American ears, Demme takes aim at a slightly obscure topic and turns up a final product that not only serves as a fascinating narrative biography but an excellent debriefing of Haiti’s turbulent political history.

The documentary simultaneously traces the life of Dominique, an agronomist turned radio journalist, and the transformation of Haiti from brutal dictatorship to equally brutal military rule to corrupt oligarchy with democratic overtones. The film is helped out by Dominique’s eccentric character—gleeful, charismatic and contrarian, which singled him out for persecution at the hands of one or another strongman’s private militia. This oppression of Dominique, his followers and poor Haitians in general is ultimately the theme that ties the film’s large historical bookends. Demme dredges up some oft-unseen footage of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s reign, which was marked by bizarre voodoo rituals at the presidential palace and the terror of the ubiquitous Tons Tons Macoutes, a troupe of Boy Scouts-gone-wrong, who bore automatic weapons in support of the ruling power. The transformation of Papa Doc’s regime into Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s into military rule into Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s hopeful but corrupt and fragmented government is portrayed as near-seemless in the film. The benefit of the documentary’s historical overview, and Dominique’s unwavering criticism of every government, empowers the film to approach critically governments which even knowledgeable Americans have regarded as widely different from one another. But Demme’s view from below, which measures rulers in terms of rural economies, Creole culture and press rights (the three trenchant categories Dominique focuses most of his activism on), provides an altogether different perspective.

Most of the interviews with Jean Dominique, his wife Michelle and employees of Radio Haiti Inter were filmed in the late 80s and early 90s, giving even this footage a sense of vintage. Other interviews are more recent, filmed in the late 90s, following the resurrection of the Aristide regime after an American military force landed on the island as peackeepers. Not only are these dispersed interviews helpful in gauging the difference in the political scene in such a crucial decade, shining light on a political history that is muddled in many newspaper accounts’ fast and loose renderings of it, but the propensity of the interviews itself serves as a testament to the immensity of the documentary project.

As the chronology of the film drives on and Dominique rises from provincial broadcaster to national celebrity, the two ends—a personal biography and a national history—meet with a booming unity. Exiled for a good part of Haiti’s recent history in New York City, Dominique plays the role of interloper in Haiti’s recent political history. For Haiti’s largely impoverished rural population, Dominique becomes the one reliable figure in politics because of his accessible Creole language transmissions through Radio Haiti. His periodic returns from the States, consistently marked with a hope that Haiti’s political situation had improved, became the dread of the ruling clique, who amply made sure—by torching Radio Haiti’s headquarters, destroying its broadcast towers, arresting and sometimes killing journalists—that Dominique’s message could not be spread.

The constant melancholy of the film—ironically tempered only by lively and high-spirited interviews with Dominique himself, forever employing flamboyant gesticulations and smoking a pipe—allows for little surprise when the final tragedy of Dominique’s own death appear in full brutality on screen. He was gunned down in 2000 by a gunman employed by one of Aristide’s associates.

The Agronomist’s notes of distress provide some much-needed context and a new perspective to an American public intrigued by the recent political events of Haiti. Demme’s documentary provides a realistic picture of Aristide—who entered the political scene from Catholic priesthood amidst high expectations and who became entangled in the same corruption and tendencies toward despotism that had been the hallmark of previous governments. And through its effective use of interviews with a deceased subject and his relatives, a clear line is drawn between Dominique, the perennial advocate for the poor masses, and the uniformly brutal and corrupt governments that have plagued Haiti.