Jean
Léopold Dominique's craggy good looks, rapid-fire eloquence and grand gestures
would have served him well on the stage or in film. He was certainly a character,
though not an actor, who believed unwaveringly in his native Haiti as it stumbled
toward democracy. His optimism was boundless, whether it was as an agronomist
who owned no land or later as a radio journalist who challenged corruption and
crime in a land where reality outdoes any fantasy.
"I
have no weapon other than my journalist's profession, my microphone," he
said in a commentary in late 1999, "and myunshakable faith as a militant
for change."
The
next spring Dominique, the spirit of Radio Haiti Inter and the subject a new documentary
by the Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme, was shot dead along with
his driver as they arrived at the station. That it happened during Haiti's flirtation
with what passed for
democracy was only the beginning of the betrayals.
Today
the few people who were arrested are free, sprung from prison by rebels after
a politically crippled President Jean Bertrand Aristide fled the country in February.
Those who hired the killers have not been found.
Dominique
has passed into that spectral pantheon, his name on walls and lips as cause and
inspiration: Jean Dominique Lives. The theme suffuses "The Agronomist,"
Mr. Demme's documentary, which opens on Friday at the Lincoln Plaza and Angelika
in Manhattan.
The
film is a reminder that while radio personalities in the United States wage mock
battles over the freedom to be vulgar, journalists like Dominique and his wife,
Michele Montas, risked death and exile. The film is also prescient.
"The
irony is that the film is opening at a moment when, however briefly, attention
is focused on Haiti," Mr. Demme said in an interview in Manhattan while working
on a remake of "The Manchurian Candidate." "What Jean has to say
in the film sheds light on today. He is still doing his job."
Mr.
Demme has long been fascinated by Haitian culture. "I ell in love with the
great Haitian aspiration for democracy," he said. "That starts dovetailing
with being an American citizen, and that means being a citizen of a country that
has played an incredibly toxic and destructive role in the course of Haiti's history.
One of the reasons our government is able to behave so cavalierly is we Americans
care so little about Haiti. Why? Because we know so little about Haiti."
It is
difficult not to care when confronted by Dominique. Mr. Demme first met him while
filming "Haiti: Dreams of Democracy" after the departure of President-for-Life
Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986.
Dominique
was charming and committed, worldly yet intensely proud of his Haitian roots.
He grew up accompanying his father, an import-export broker, throughout the Haitian
countryside and later studied agronomy in France. There he immersed himself in
French film, a love that on his return to Haiti inspired him not only to form
the country's first cinema club but also to be a co-director of "But I Am
Beautiful, Too," the first movie filmed in Haiti by Haitians.
Dominique
spent six years as an agronomist, helping peasants grow cocoa and rice. But the
work also provoked the ire of landowners, who persuaded the authorities to jail
him for six months. He eventually gave up agronomy to work in radio, first as
a freelancer and later as the owner of Radio Haiti Inter, where he introduced
such radical concepts as broadcasting in Creole, the language of the masses, as
well as reporting on political and human rights issues.
His
journalism twice got him exiled, both times in New York, first under Duvalier
and then in 1991 under the military regime that had ousted his friend Mr. Aristide.
It was during the latter exile that Mr. Demme and his colleague, Peter Saraf,
began filming interviews that became the documentary.
Although
Mr. Demme had conceived a documentary that would have a happy ending - with the
journalist returning to his homeland and his microphone - he now admits that he
also thought of those initial interviews as a screen test.
"I
was struck by his incredible charisma, his star power, if you will," Mr.
Demme said. "I really felt immediately, Here's a guy who'd have a terrific
presence in feature films. He reminded me of Jean-Louis Barrault, one of the greatest
French stage actors of all time."
Several
of the sessions they filmed were related to a stage project Mr. Demme had later
envisioned for Dominique. He thought of presenting him at the Public Theater in
New York as a "Spalding Gray of the Southern Hemisphere" in a show called
"The History of Haitian Cinema." In it Dominique would have mined Haitian
history and culture for great films yet to be shot.
"We'd
go to dramatic lighting and dramatic underscoring, and Jean with his incredible
storytelling gifts would lure us into picturing this amazing scene from Haitian
cinema," Mr. Demme said. "And then `Bing!' the lights would pop on,
and Jean would say, `Of course that scene hasn't been filmed yet.' "
The
happy ending, however, proved elusive when Dominique returned in 1995 to find
his radio station ransacked by the military after the coup. Caught up in rebuilding,
he told Mr. Demme that he had no time to continue the documentary. "The tapes
I had accumulated with Jean were put on a shelf," Mr. Demme said. "I
pulled them out on April 3, 2000, the day he was killed. That is when the scope
of the
documentary changed in a profound way."
The
story of Dominique became a damning portrait of a country where justice itself
was in exile. His story intermingles with that of Mr. Aristide. Where he once
called his onetime friend's first victory "the most wonderful experience
of my life," he was now challenging him on the radio to stop the corruption
swirling about his political party.
"You
come to Jean Dominique's microphone, and you have got to be prepared to tell the
truth," Mr. Demme said. "Horrifyingly, Aristide dodged the hard questions
and came back with homilies and metaphors. There was an instant rupture between
the two. For me it is also a reference point for Aristide's spiraling away from
what he had once been and into the political animal he was to become."
Dominique's
assassination and the investigation of it - in which judges were threatened, witnesses
vanished and others were killed - did little to dispel those fears. On Christmas
2002 a gunman tried unsuccessfully to assassinate his wife, Ms. Montas. A few
months later a watered down indictment failed to single out who had ordered any
of the violence.
Ms.
Montas now says that Mr. Aristide - whom she and her husband had once supported
without hesitation - was complicit in at least the cover-up.
Mr.
Aristide had repeatedly vowed that the family would find justice, but the investigation
was hobbled by one obstacle after another.
"It
is a betrayal," said Ms. Montas, who lives in New York and works at the United
Nations. "I was once sure he couldn't have given the order to kill Jean.
Now I don't know."
Although
her husband is the center of the film, she is in the most riveting scene. One
month after the assassination she returns to the air, delivering a statement that
blends tropical magic realism with defiance worthy of the French Resistance. Jean
Dominique, she explained, never died, thanks to a magic spell that rendered him
invisible to his would-be killers.
"Yes,"
she said, her face a portrait of love and resolve. "Jean Léopold Dominique,
free man, citizen of this torn land, is alive. Good morning, Jean."
Since
that day Dominique continues to attract others to his cause. Wyclef Jean, whom
Mr. Demme approached about contributing a song to the movie, insisted on doing
the entire soundtrack. The music ranges from hip-hop to folky and mournful, with
lyrics in Creole.
"As
a Haitian kid whose parents came to America and told me to get an education to
try and make something of myself, Jean Dominique inspires me," Mr. Jean said.
"Here is this guy who spoke beautifully and was educated in Paris, and he
still felt he wanted to go back to his country to make a
difference."
That,
too, is part of his mystique, his ability to get others to believe despite bitter
experience. Mr. Demme said that in making the documentary, he had a small epiphany.
"I'd
look at the film and go, `Wow, Jean was a little mad, wasn't he?' " he said.
"It's a terrific madness, but he looks to be a little mad. I was very aware
of his passion. But when I see the way his thoughts abstracted into the message
of the film, the Don Quixote aspect of Jean Dominique hits me."
To
live in a benighted land and see beauty or to hope for democracy after dozens
of coups perhaps requires a little madness. So, too, does looking for justice
and the day when Jean Dominique's killers and the men who sent them arethemselves
judged.
But
of course that scene hasn't been filmed yet.
