Buffets of Visual Delights

I think that movies about food are probably the best movies in the world. They combine eating (one of the basic functions and necessities of life)--one of my favorite things--with movies, my other favorite thing. I thought that I would take a moment, therefore, and reflect on several movies about food that I love. In this post, I'll be looking at 3 films: Chocolat, Eat Drink Man Woman, and Julie and Julia. I would love to write about Babette's Feast, unfortunately I have not scene it recently enough to remember it. It is going on the top of my list however.

I will begin by saying that of these three movies, I think that Eat Drink, Man Woman is my favorite. Now, I realize what you're all thinking. Chocolate is my favorite food ever, and "Chocolat" has the magnificent Johnny Depp in it (not to mention Alfred Molina and Juliette Binoche). Oh, I do love that movie, and perhaps it is only because I saw Eat Drink, Man Woman more recently. But the way in which the story is told, the absolute beauty of the cooking, and the complicated interrelations of the characters somehow made "EDMW" more real for me, and a good film experience. There is less fantasy about it than in Chocolat--this isn't good, or bad, it just is, and it has contributed to my own personal opinion about the movie.

EDMW is about an aging chef and his three daughters, and the difficulties they have relating to him, and each other. He is losing his sense of taste, and here is the problem. It's the very core of who he is, and cooking has shaped his relationships with each of his daughters--who themselves are for the most part each involved in different ways with food. The youngest works at a fast food restaurant, and the middle daughter dreamed of being a chef when she was younger, however her father would not allow it, because he thought she should make something of herself by going to business school. There are twists and turns, and ups and downs in the stories of the characters, with one major reveal at the end of the story. One of the main things that I love is the concentration on the actual food. The preparation of a sumptuous feast is the subject of the main credits, and when people are cooking, the concentration is not only on the person doing the cooking, but on the actual food.

Herein lies the difference between this movie (and Chocolat--which also concentrates on the actual chocolate) and Julie and Julia. I enjoyed J&J, but mostly because I thought Meryl Streep was outstanding. Amy Adams was good as an actor, but I did not much care for her actual character, and while there was a lot of cooking going on in that movie, and we were supposed to get the feel of how it was changing her, it was in no way as effective as the former 2 movies that I have mentioned. J&J did not focus on the actual preparation of the food--you were lucky to see her in the preparation stage, and suddenly she had a finished product. They were trying so hard to show that the process of cooking was changing Julie (and Julia), that they forgot to show the actual act of cooking, which is what was supposed to change them. There were a couple of scenes where they got close--but I've been trying to figure out what I felt was missing from the movie, and this is it.

In comparison, EDMW and Chocolat show you the ingredients, they show you the cooking being done, they show you the people as they are doing it, they show the glorious results of all the hard work. They showed the actual influence of food in these people's lives--how it shaped and influenced who they were as people. Food wasn't just a pastime, or a vehicle to tell something about the characters, and get to the end of the movie. Food IS the movie in EDMW and Chocolat, and I think this is why they are such wonderful films. The food and the characters are not mutually exclusive in these two films, whereas in J&J, I did not get the connection with the food as greatly. I'm not sure if it was the choice of concentration in the cooking scenes, but the camera did not ever focus on the actual food and cooking, and therein lies the fallacy.

Anyway, I have been a fan of Ang Lee since Sense and Sensibility, and somehow I never saw Eat Drink Man Woman. All I can say is that if you haven't seen it, you are missing one of the great films of modern cinema, and perhaps Ang Lee's best (granted, I have not made my way through all of his films yet--but so far, this is my favorite). I can't even explain how he did it. It's an amazing piece of the work, simultaneously centered around the characters and their relationships with each other (as all of his films are if you dig beneath the surface plot--e.g. Hulk) and their relationships to food. It's one of my favorite films that I have seen in this year, and I highly recommend it.

P.S. I recommend Chocolat also, as I do with any and every movie that Johnny Depp has ever been in--it is also wonderful, and about my favorite kind of food. The point is that I love movies about food and how it changes people's lives--perhaps because they are so elemental (since everyone eats--and hopefully everyone has had food good enough to change their world--and how they see it--at some point).

The Hurt Locker

I went to see The Hurt Locker at the Art a week ago because I had heard via Roger Ebert that it was not a film to be missed. Normally, I am not a fan of war films--mostly they kind of bore me. However, The Hurt Locker was a drastically different experience for me. It did seem long, but it seems more like the actual tension of the film, and the depth of the characters was what created the length, rather than a plot that doesn't move, or a simply boring film.

The Hurt Locker was gritty and real, shot with hand-held cameras in the tracking sequences, and quite claustrophobic at points, especially when the main character, a bomb expert, dons his large, black, space-age suit. It is exhilarating and terrifying to watch him do his job--especially after seeing the guy he replaced go down in the first five minutes of the movie.

The performances are excellent, especially Jeremy Renner (who remembers him as awesome from S.W.A.T.!). His character seems so simple, yet is so copmlicated, that you spend the whole movie intricately involved in his character. He loves what he does--he cannot exist without it. The opening of the film tells us that war is a drug, and it is incredibly interesting to watch this film about someone who is quite literally addicted to the danger, the excitement, and the adrenaline rush from his work.

I highly recommend the film also, because, for me--who is not a fan of war films--it truly gives a sense of what it might be like to be over there. It unveiled a deep gratitude for our soldiers over their that I did not realize existed, and it made me feel more deeply connected to my own family members who have gone over there and faced all that chaos and danger. Thank you.

My favorite moments of the film:
1. An extreme close up of half the character's face as he comes in contact with a body bomb
2. The moment where the audience realizes that, like most people, he has a hard time distinguishing individuals of a different ethnic group than most Americans.
3. Anytime he is diffusing a bomb: you want tension, just put a guy trying to disarm a bomb with no cinematic clues as to what is going to happen next.
4. The moment when he is in a line trying to pick a cereal from all the meaningless brand names around him.
5. The moment when a woman's name flashes in the director's name spot. Generally, it is not a genre I associate with women, and I am glad to see a woman in a role of importance in such a good film.

Not all Indian Cinema is Bollywood.

There seems to be a common misconception among a lot of the people that I discuss Indian cinema with. It commonly all gets lumped into the category of 'Bollywood'. Some people find offense at this, some don't. I think I might have mentioned this in an earlier blog, but I thought I would reiterate it here since I will be discussing a film that does not fall into the lumped up category of Bollywood.

Bollywood is categorized by epic narratives, melodramatic story lines, romance, song and dance routines, and oftentimes happy endings (however, I've found that there are more sad endings than people actually think that there are).

A recent film that I saw has few of the characteristics that many people associate with Indian film, and it is by far one of the best pieces of cinema that I have seen in a while. Now, even I have to twist my arm to get myself to watch films that are critically high rated, but may not sound like the most interesting films. Alll I can say to this is that you will be happy with the results.

"Mr. and Mrs. Iyer" takes place en route from a southern Indian town to Kolkuta. Mrs. Iyer is traveling by bus to see her in-laws with her young son. A young man named Raja is enlisted to help her on the trip if she needs anything because their families and friends are acquainted somehow. Once on the bus however, they encounter a region where tensions between Muslims and Hindus have escalated to extreme violence. Mrs. Iyer (a strict Hindu) lies in order to protect Raja (a Muslim) from the mob that boards the bus. This scene is perhaps one of the most claustrophobic I have seen in a long time, and is extremely well done. From this point, the tension of the film increases, and it is quite possible to feel the fear and panic, and the sheer danger that could occur in situations like this. It is quite hard for someone like me, who has never had to encounter terrors such as the people in this film do, to understand how scary something like this truly is. "Mr. and Mrs. Iyer" however, puts even the most privileged and clueless people in the positions that I imagine are still not uncommon in countries where religious and political strife still runs high. While this films was made a decade after the Bombay (Mumbai) Riots, and religious tensions are said to have subsided, they are not impossible. "Mr. and Mrs. Iyer" is a very interesting and eye-opening look at how ordinary people must deal with and live through events like this.

There are many films about terrorists, and perhaps this is the wrong label for what this film is about. But usually (and since Bollywood is my example, I'll stick with it), violence stemming from national issues, religious issues, or what have you is glamorized with fast cutting, loud MTV-style music, and James Bond-like figures who try to control the situation. The film "Fanaa", which I greatly emjoy, uses a background of the political tension surrounding the disputed region of Kashmir to set an epic romance. I admit that I love the movie (as I do with anything Aamir Khan is in), however, in comparison with a film like "Mr. and Mrs. Iyer", it is clear to see with is the better film--both in cinematic terms and narratively. The latter film also foregrounds romance, however it is a more subdued and realistic star-crossed romance, where people behave as they actually might in real life. The shots are long and ponderous, allowing the viewer to soak in the whole image, and letting the actors act, and creating their relationship through their interaction, versus through editing. The music in the film does not consist of lip-synching and dancing, but is non-diegetic and adds to the atmosphere and the reflection of the film. There are even shots that reminded me of Yasujiro Ozu's work, such as a shot of an old Muslim couple, where the woman looks at her hands after her husband mentions it's the only thing he saw of her the first time he saw her. These types of shots are not necessary to advance the plot, but instead are present to add a sense of time, an understanding of their relationship, and a sense of evanescence (hence, the connection to Ozu).


The framing of the film is also something that I found quite stunning, with careful selection going into the composition, allowing at times for beautiful symmetry and also helping construct the relationship between the two people who the film is about. Which leads me back to my final point about how the characters interact. Often in films, the meeting of two people who fall in love is fast, and suddenly they're in a montage, or are in love after 2 days, or any of that nonsense. Don't get me wrong, I think this is fine (especially if, in the course of the movie, they only spend a total of 2 weeks in each other's presence, a la Fanaa). However, it is not very realistic (call me a cynic, but I have yet to witness something such as love at first sight, which I don't think I necessarily believe in). The relationship of the main characters in "Mr. and Mrs. Iyer" is carefully navigated as they try to understand one another. In a country as religiously, linguistically and culturally diverse as India, she is Tamil (I'm not sure if this is the correct term for someone from Tamil Nadu) and he is Bengali. The only common language that they share is English--a feature of the film that I also found was very interesting and that someone who does not come from a country with as many languages as India would not think about. They are from different religions, with different practices (for example, she is vegetarian, and he is not), leading to several confrontations about how they interact that are very interesting. It seems to me that in more mainstream popular cinema, this is also something that, while it is mentioned a lot (eg. "you can't get married, she's Muslim and you're Hindu!), it is not fully explored, and I think that Mr. and Mrs. Iyer did a good job of this as well.

Anyway, after a long post, and an even longer abscence, I will wrap up this post by saying that I think this is one of the best Indian films that I have seen, and I hope that I will see many more like it. I would definitely recommend it if you aren't a fan of the "Bollywood" genre, but are interested in Indian film and culture.