Long had I held in my impressions that this movie was gastroporn, and that it was French! I suppose I had no real reason to believe these things other than the title and a recommendation from Entre Nous.
As I should have from my previous misconceptions, I believe I have now learned to keep an open mind and simply believe.
While the food that Babette creates is wondrous in itself, it is the power of touching people’s lives with what you do best that resonates throughout this film. Set in a small religious community in Denmark, Babette truly creates a life-changing, or at least enlightening, event with her culinary expertise. It took it’s time to get there, like any classic gastronomic phenomenon, and the creation was too much of a blur to be the miracle in itself. I was desperate to enjoy that meal and savor every taste with the unknowing recipients.
There also is a fair amount of religious symbolism that I am sure can be explored further and I would like to take the time to address after I’ve had the opportunity to watch this film several more times. The first that jumps out at me is the 12 diners at the table, breaking bread together. The diners themselves refer to the wedding at Cana, though the miracle here is not in riches made out of mere paucity. More significantly, the sisters - the right and left hand of their father, the prophet-priest - have arranged this dinner to celebrate their father, on the anniversary of his birth. Is he the Jesus figure to complete the Last Supper? Is the General, who guides the reluctant participants through the wonders, instead? Or is the sacrifice made by the woman in the kitchen, behind the scenes, who may have been able to be the twelfth at the table had not the General come to call?
The true miracle, though, is in the kinship and reconciliation that is brought out through good food, fantastic wine, and a well planned menu. May Babette forgive me for eating an improvised version of Don Henley’s chili over leftover grains when I could have been eating Caille en Sarcophage!
I do believe that my culinary adventure, though, in creating a warm late-winter stew on one of the last nights of the winter season might indeed be considered my art, as in Babette’s words, I simply strove to “do my best.”
