food films: 'Big Night'

Columbia/Tri Star

"To eat good food is to be close to God." ~Primo, Big Night

Food movies--is there a better, more soul and spirit full genre? Big Night (1996) is definitely a good choice on that menu. While not as spirit rich as Babette's Feast, it is a strong and full-flavored story of two brothers from Italy struggling to make a success of their small Italian restaurant. 

And nestled in this story beset with the tension between the temptations of success and the integrity of the culinary art (and it is, my friends, an amazing and magical art), is a wonderful meal reminiscent of Babette's in which a neighborhood of competitors, friends, lovers, and new acquaintances sit down to a feast that moves their palettes and their hearts. Alas, not all ends well for our brothers, but that scene gives us the hope that life and love will smooth the wounds and hardships that they--like us--must deal with as they go.

"Ratatouille": Of rats and transformation

Images: Pixar

When I made that French Chicken Stew last weekend, I couldn't help but think of Ratatouille, the animated story of Remy, a rat with a gift for chefing who joins forces with a young, upcoming want-to-be chef to bring back the reputation of a restaurant in Paris. The film's become an enjoyable favorite of mine and my kids. I particularly love the scene where Remy uses light and color to describe taste and I appreciate how the film treats cooking as a gift--and how the use of our gifts affects those around us. And I'm still moved by one particular moment near the end of the film that has do with that kind of transformation.

In this scene, Remy works with his human friend Alfredo Linguini to create a dish of Ratatouille that will wow an egotistical critic (aptly named Anton Ego and wonderfully voiced by Peter O’Toole) who has come with full-intention to tank the restaurant’s reputation. In a beautifully animated moment, Ego takes a bite of the dish and his hardened, angry, scowling face melts into wonder tinged with longing. Then his face morphs into a sad, boyhood Anton in his childhood home, and we watch him relive the moment his mother serves him the same dish to comfort him.

When we see present-day Anton again, his face and eyes have softened—permanently, we realize. He’s changed. As if the taste of the food wasn’t enough of a transformation, later Remy’s human friends explain to the critic that it was a rat who made the food. That’s a lot to swallow. But the experience he’s just had is too strong to dismiss.

So, Anton writes his review, a moment that shows just how deep his transformation went:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

There’s some good lines in this piece, but I particularly resonated with this one: “there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.” We are all critics in our own ways, be it of our fields of expertise, culture, friends, family or countless other things. This idea that we are willing to think outside the box and recognize something (or someone) pure, good, beautiful, out of the ordinary, new and outside of our normal experience—and to risk the rejection of our friends or the pressure of others to maintain the status quo in defending it (or them)—is something of which we need to be reminded. It is easy to go day-after-day in the same way of seeing, processing and behaving. But if we pay attention, let go of our expectations of how things should be and look around to see what God is up to in the people around us, we may be able to experience something of what Anton did in Ratatouille.

There are a lot of other moments and themes dealing with transformation running through this film, but this moment was one of the more powerful to me. And, like Anton, I'm sure I'll be returning to see Remy.

Note: This review is an edited version of one that originally appeared on my other blog: In the open space: God & culture.

"No Reservations" about the best recipes in life

Image: Warner Bros

I adore food. And I enjoy creating in the kitchen. Being a chef is on my list of one-of-those-careers-I-would-have-enjoyed (along with astronaut, film critic and paleontologist). So, it makes sense that I really like movies about food, my top favorites being Babette’s Feast, Tortilla Soup and Eat Drink Man Woman. Awhile back, I watched another of these food-fare films, No Reservations—and while it doesn’t crack my top three, I really liked it.

This film (a remake of the German Mostly Martha) follows Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a brilliant master chef at a swanky New York restaurant who likes to be in control of her kitchen—and her life. Early on in the film, her sister and nine-year-old niece Zoe (Abigail Breslin) are in a car accident on their way to see her. Her sister is killed, but Zoe survives with minor injuries and comes to live with Kate. As Kate struggles to figure out how to connect with and be a mother to Zoe, she also must learn to relate with the restaurant’s new laid-back and fun-loving sous-chef Nick (Aaron Eckhart). Gradually, Kate finds herself experiencing life on new terms and must face some choices when it comes to determining what really matters.

While the film didn't great critical reception, there were lots of things I really liked about this film. The idea that food—both its preparation and its eating—brings us together. The pain and beauty relationships entail. How love often entails doing what’s best for another rather than what’s best for oneself. And how there’s nothing like being loved and loving a child.

But what I liked best came out of a scene near the end of the film, where Kate is talking to her therapist (Bob Balaban), who throughout the film has been somewhat perplexed with her:

“I wish,” Kate confesses, “there was a cookbook for life, you know, with recipes telling us exactly what to do.” She waves her hand at her therapist. “I know, I know. You’re going to say, ‘How else do we learn, Kate.’”

“Hmm,” he says. “No, actually I wasn’t going to say that. You want to guess again?”

“No, no, go ahead.”

“What I was going to say was: You know better than anyone. It’s the recipes that you create yourself that are the best.”

I like this scene because it echoes a deeper and greater truth. In this messy, muddled and chaotic life, it is as we love each other that the best recipes are created—ones with bursting with the flavors like truth, forgiveness, repentance, and not seeking one’s own.

This is all amplified in the Word—of which it’s not uncommon to think of as a kind of recipe book. But I think that shortchanges what the Bible contains. Indeed, it is full of unparalleled wisdom and life-changing truths by which we live, it shows us how the world really works, and it reveals who God is and how he works—but it isn’t a recipe book.

No, this Word lays bear the magnificent Story of God working and loving and redeeming and restoring in the dust, blood, beauty and mess of this broken world—a Story in which we too are invited to work and walk with and grow in the likeness to Jesus. And this Story—this Word—points us not to rules or recipes or plays for life but to a relationship. And it is in that relationship that recipes are created that work best in our here-and-now as-we-go life. It is through the Story that I find out about and get to know God—and it is in walking with Jesus that I learn how to love people here-and-now in the ever complex and shifting moments of life.

Indeed, there isn’t a recipe book for life. It is as we love—as we walk with Jesus, love God and love others—that the best recipes in life (and even life itself) are created.


(Note: This review originally appeared on my other blog, In the open space: God & Culture.)

Food for thought: Senses

image: mine

Do you know why we clink glasses before drinking?... It's so that all the five senses are involved. We touch the glass. We smell the drink. We see its color. We taste it. Hearing is the only sense that doesn't participate unless we create it.

~Carmen Naranjo, Tortilla Soup



Revisiting "Babette's Feast"

I first saw this gentle (and Academy Award winning) 1987 Danish film—developed from a short story written by Isak Dinesen, the pen name of Karen von Blixon who’s the subject of one of my other favorite films, Out of Africa—at least 10 years ago. My folks, who’ve had a deep and life-long involvement in discipleship, had seen the film and recommended it to me. (I think they even gave me the VHS copy I own.)

On the surface it’s a simple story of two sisters as they live with their minister father and later take care his tiny flock after he dies in a plain and austere village on the Danish coast. Late in their lives, Babette (who’s fleeing the war in France after the death of her husband and child) joins the sisters, cooking for and working with them as they care for the people in their tiny village. The story builds to these years, because Babette is a woman with a gift of which the sisters are unaware but one that nurtures them and contributes to their healing (and the healing of the community in which they live) in ways which both surprise and awe them. With the film’s themes of service and the relentless life that expresses itself in our gifts, it’s not hard to understand the connection with discipleship and learning to live in and with Jesus. I thought it a beautiful film the first time I saw it, and still do.

I recently ran across it again on television one night whilst my husband was on an out-of-town trip and the kids were tucked away in bed. (It was back-to-back with another subtitled and food-focused film, Ang Lee’s Taiwanese Eat Drink Man Woman, which was the inspiration for the American Tortilla Soup, a version that I actually like better in some ways but not in others, but that’s a subject for another post.) This time through Babette's Feast, I was particularly struck by how well it illustrates how poor our understanding is of each others’ gifts and how they are to be used. Far too often we see gifts as tools to be used for our own gain—whether that be for our personal benefit or well-intentioned agendas of a well-intentioned community (including religious communities). But gifts have their greatest power when they are freed from agendas and allowed to flourish simply where they are—with no other agenda except to help bring Life and Love into the world around them.

I was also struck by how missed opportunities—by choice or as casualties of this broken world—can be beautifully woven into revelations about and overwhelming gifts of the Love and Life of God. I was particularly moved and comforted twice in the film as one character tells another that their gift—which on appearances seemed lost in this world but in retrospect was never lost at all—would be cherished and used in perfection in heaven. The last time is spoken by one of the sisters to Babette:

But this is not the end, Babette. I’m certain it is not. In Paradise, you will be the great artist that God meant you to be. Ah, how you will delight the angels!

The film left me with a strong sense of longing for the world where this takes place. And yet, somewhat paradoxically, I was also left with a renewed sense of God’s intimate, personal and relentless attention and work to heal, comfort and change us and the world—and how our gifts work with him in that.

I’ve touched on only two simple threads in this film. There’s been a plethora of articles (and a chapter in at least two books) about both the film and story which delve into the faith and God-talk in this film (which is eighth on the list of Arts and Faith Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films), so I’ll leave you to those who’ve written much more insightfully and in-depth than I to plum the richness of this film. (If you’re an ambitious chef, you can try some of the recipes that were created for a stage production of the story and try these hints for serving up your own feast.)

But then, you could also enjoy the film simply for the beauty and gift it is: an expression of Life and Love.

Note: This entry was originally posted on my other blog, In the Open Space: God & Culture.