My favourite film ever - Babette's Feast.

I was reading a discussion about the best film that a reviewer had seen and fully expected him to select Gone with the Wind (USA 1939) Citizen Kane (USA 1941), Casablanca (USA 1942), The Third Man (UK 1949), Lawrence of Arabia (UK 1962) or The Lord of the Rings trilogy (New Zealand/UK 2001–2003).

I would have voted for Babette’s Feast (Denmark 1987) and was delighted to see it was one of the three winners. I was also surprised, mainly because a] Denmark seems somewhat remote for most cinema fans and b] the film displays no violence, no teenage angst, no nakedness and no chase scene.

Written and directed by Gabriel Axel, this drama was based on the story by Isak Dinesen /Karen Blixen and starred Stéphane Audran. It was the first Danish film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The story was simple. In 19th century rural Denmark, two aged spinsters lived in a village with their father, who was the minister of a rather pious Protestant church. Out of the blue a French woman refugee arrived at their secluded front door, fleeing counter-revolutionary bloodshed in Paris. The two sisters allowed Babette to stay and she repaid their kind­ness by working for them as their house keeper. Her only link to her former life was a lottery ticket that someone in Paris renewed for her every year.

Babette's Feast.

Dark austere clothes, grey austere hair, dark 19th century room.
But examine the concentration and the opportunity for pleasure.

One day Babette won the top lottery prize of 10,000 francs. Apparently she had been a professional chef in her earlier life, and when the sisters decided to put on a dinner to mark the 100th anniversary of their late father’s birth, Babette asked to do the cooking. She was clearly prepared to spend all of her winnings locally, instead of using it to return to Paris and to her previous life. I am sure that the good sisters secretly feared what a Frenchwoman and Catholic might do in their kitchen, nonetheless they invited the entire village to the dinner. Babette then prepared the finest French feast ever eaten in all of Denmark’s history.

With such a slim story line, character and photography became the most important elements of the film. I really loved the second half of the film that focused on the preparation, serving and consumption of Babette's rich feast. The richness of the food was in sharp contrast to the austere house and the even more austere vil­lagers. Would the pious, elderly church congregants comment harshly on the earthly pleasures of their meal and thus ruin the evening? 

Babette's work in the kitchen was a labour of love.
The cooking and eating scenes had modern foodies drooling in the cinema.

Slowly slowly Babette's very special personality, and her ability as a chef, helped them let go of their innate distrust, allowing some pleasure to seep into their souls. Her soul, and her food, actively seduced the villagers into letting go of their inhibitions!! One blogger summarised it beautifully. Babette’s act of self-sacrifice caused old wrongs to be forgotten, ancient loves to be rekindled and a mystical redemption of the human spirit to settle over the table.