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).