Preview

Babette's Feast Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
810 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Babette's Feast Analysis
Babette’s Feast and the Power of Art

When all deadlines are met and time is out in my favor, one can usually find me sitting comfortably on the couch with a bowl of popcorn on one hand and a remote control on the other. Watching movies has always been one of my favorite leisure. Although I try to see films from different parts of the world as much as I can, perhaps like the many others who belong in my generation, Hollywood movies are always top of the list. Seldom do I find fascination with other international productions especially European ones. They are slow-paced, often more serious and “less entertaining” than those produced in Hollywood. However, watching the Danish film “Babette’s Feast” made me reconsider and view European films with a different lens – one with a little more appreciation and interest. While the slow pacing is inherent to this kind of cinema, they also present a different style and meat altogether, leaving more room for its audience to think rather than just instant gratification offered by most American movies. This is very evident in Babette’s Feast. In its subtlety and simplicity, together with the use of brilliant metaphors and symbolisms, it was able to uncover the transforming power of art with beauty and sophistication.

Babette’s Feast tells the story of two pious sisters whose lives were changed by their French servant, who was apparently an unspoken artist, Babette. One of the images that constantly reappear all throughout the movie, especially in the beginning, is the image of the dried fish. This symbolizes the life of Martina and Philippa and perhaps even those in the community who was devoted to the preaching of their father that to attain salvation, one must deprive himself all physical or worldly pleasures including food. They lived a life of unhealthy simplicity and unreasonable meagerness. Their simple and puritan way of living is so extreme that it has become dreary and ironically “lifeless”, like a dried fish in

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Scrumptious flavors and aromas accompanied a night filled with great music in Hennepin Avenue’s Famous Dave’s restaurant, where Tommy Castro and the Painkillers put on a show like no other. Tommy Castro lived up to his reputation of being former BB King Entertainer of the Year on Friday, October 7th, as he moved the entire crowd through his music and stories. This foot-tapping music was perfectly complemented with Famous Dave’s All American Feast, which consisted of mouth-watering ribs, flavor-filled corn, juicy country-roasted chicken, barbeque smothered brisket, crispy famous fries, bacon infused beans, creamy coleslaw, and godly corn bread. To complete the decadent meal and the night full of blues music, bread pudding and ice cream were…

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Nelmes, Jill, ed. An Introduction to Film Studies. 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.…

    • 1496 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Best Essays

    Kracauer, Siegfried. “Basic Concepts.” Film Theory and Criticism. Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall. New York: Oxford, 2009. 147-158.…

    • 2775 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Over a period of time, specific audiences construct expectations of different types of media, related to either what they have been told, or perhaps what the media have exposed them to in the past. Indeed, it could be argued that the success of a film to a large degree, rests on whether or not such expectations are met, surpassed, else the audience successfully surprised. Certainly, such expectations have to be addressed by the film, if it is to be considered satisfying for the audience, and in this way, elements within the film, such as character representations, the narrative and cinematography are all important components which allow this to be achieved. Additionally, the social and political context in which the film is being viewed must be considered, as it is against this background that their expectations will have been formed.…

    • 3110 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    Close Analysis Vertigo

    • 2648 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Elsaesser, Thomas, and Malte Hagener. Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses. New York, New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.…

    • 2648 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    The variety of films mentioned aims to provide an extensive inquiry into both modern and traditional films. To substantiate this inquiry, an article by Paste Magazine has been supplemented, containing some of the most well-known and endorsed films of the 21st century. The logic behind including an article of this nature is to examine mainstream/dominant culture as it communicates the disposition and context of…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Amna Mahmood Anne Malone English 1101 28 October 2014 North by Northwest Essay In his essay “Great Movies” Roger Ebert says how our minds are “limit[ed]” when it comes to “curiosity” and we don’t let our minds explore great movies that aren’t just big hit movies. We are exposed to many movies from “100 years, in color and black and white, in sound and silence, in wide-screen and the classic frame, in English and every other language,” but we only watch movies that are considered “box-office winner[s]”. Ebert talks about an Iranian movie he had seen with around 1,000 children and parents, and how everyone watched the movie so attentively.…

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After I read chapters 18 and 19 in Animal Reader I almost couldn’t bring myself to eat meat. I had already begun to shy away from red meat, but not because my conscience was making me feel shame or guilt. Instead, I just sort of break out with hives if I eat a lot of red meat, but even that reaction didn’t stop me from enjoying my previously heavy carnivorous diet. I am beginning to be more mindful of my treatment towards animals and of my meat consumption. I don’t think I can ever look at bacon the same way because I now think of a pig being stuck inside a box and not being able to even turn around and it ties into my acute fear of claustrophobia.…

    • 432 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Nosferatu Essay

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is a groundbreaking film of its kind. As a German horror film, the vampire movie is one of the earliest of its genre. The film is based on Bram Stocker’s 1897 book Dracula. In Nosferatu, Murnau created some of the most detailed images in German expressionist cinema during the Weimar years. Nosferatu’s shadow ascending their stairs toward the woman who awaits him evokes an entire era and genre of filmmaking. There are vivid scenes in the film when Nosferatu’s ship glides into the harbor with its freight of coffins, rats, sailor’s corpses and plague are some the most recognizable details of Murnau’s film. Much of the scenes in Nosferatu were shot in an interesting manner and held significant meaning to the film. The location shooting used so effectively by Murnau was rarely seen in German films at the time. It is the purpose of this paper to detail and analyze Murnau’s film Nosferatu and how it applies to a historical context. This paper will discuss the film Nosferatu, the theme of death and how it is…

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    To live is to die; this is the message both poems convey, a somber reminder that without death there cannot be life, and without ignorance there cannot be knowledge. These poems represent a duality of two opposing forces, akin to how shadows are born by light, and how change will always be a positively and negatively occurring force. A Breakfast for Barbarians by Gwendolyn Macewen concerns itself with the evolution of a culture, a company of barbarians ripped of their namesake and turned into scholars. Similarly, Breaking by Phyllis Webb addresses both religion and mental stability, questioning from the first line whether one is ever truly whole. Instead of addressing the act of change, Breaking aims to pool together a mass of known and gifted…

    • 1696 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Babette's Feast

    • 194 Words
    • 1 Page

    In Babette’s Feast, Isak Dinesen symbolizes food as a metaphor of love and humanity. The food prepared by Babette, the house keeper, discovers brotherhood and true piousness among the followers of pious minister that was losing gradually. Babette transforms the lives of many people in the single evening. Before Babette’s meal, guests quarrel and criticize each other and that, Martine and Philippa worries about their group’s spirituality. However, by mentioning “they stumbled and got up, walked on or stood still, bodily as well as spiritually hand in hand” (16) represents that, during the feast, the wine so loosens their tongues and the food so warms their hearts that, by the end of dinner they bring back their companionship that they had lost…

    • 194 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chocolat Unfinished

    • 1145 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The film started when an unwed mother, Vianne Rocher and her daughter, Anouk moved to the village on a Sunday. The villagers, being pious, or trying to be, was at the church attending mas, as this was the custom of their village which is strictly following the orders of the Catholic Church. As a new villager, Vianne was invited by the mayor to attend the mass but she declined. Not only that but Vianne, in her daring and fabulous clothes, that were not acceptable on Lenten season, challenged traditions by opening a chocolaterie in front of the Church and operated business on a Sunday. As a rule of the village, taken from the Church, chocolates are a form of indulgence and temptation and cannot be eaten during Lent so the mayor, in order to restrict his villagers to go and get some of the chocolates in Vianne’s shop, he bad-mouthed her and even went to point out Vianne as “Satan’s helper” in one of the resident priest’s homily in which he also had the final say. However, despite his precautions, some people, out of curiosity and human nature came to taste the chocolates and went back for more because of the good things that happened to their lives because of the chocolates (e.g. an aphrodisiac for a married couple who were lacking in sexual passion). She also helped a local woman who was being beaten by her husband to escape the cruelty by leaving her husband and lived with…

    • 1145 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nosferatu Analysis

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Nosferatu (1922), directed by F. W. Murnau and also known as the first big screen version of Stocker’s “Dracula”, is considered a cinematic masterpiece. In this silent movie, Hutter, a real estate employee, is assigned by his boss to visit Count Orlock (the vampire) who shows interest in a residence, and in Hutter’s wife, Ellen. The mise-en-scene and Murnau’s style of expressionism in this movie makes it one of the most “naturalistically-creepy” movie. The connotations quoting Cavallius in the beginning, however, give a sence of alarm/danger (“blood”, “plague”, “terrible epidemic”). But then again, the music in this first scene doesn’t give off the atmosphere that it will be based on horror. Instead, it introduces the main characters, Hutter and Ellen, in a happy,…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    According to David Bordwell’s research, Hollywood had a basic outline on how they made their films. The classical narrative cinema follows narrative structure, cinematic style, and spectatorial activity. In Classical Hollywood Cinema there is usually a psychologically defined, goal oriented character that’s easy to like. Foreign countries had a different way of making film, post WWII, Europe reestablished their facilitated film export and coproduction. Since the U.S. was exhibiting film in other countries it gave those foreign countries a chance to make film for international audiences. The neorealist films may be considered the first postwar versions of art cinema. Most of these films were made by New Wave film directors, Fellini, Resnais, Bergman, De Sica, Kurosawa, Pasolini, etc. The Stylistic Devices and Thematic Motifs seem to differ between these directors but the overall functions of style and theme seem to remain constant in Art Cinema. Art Cinema is the exact opposite of the classical narrative cinema and it avoids the cause and effect linkage of events throughout a film. The characteristics of Art Cinema are easy to follow; it gives a realistic setting since most of these films are shot on location without the use of “sets”. Things may occur in the film for no apparent reason and it may never be explained at all in the film. Most of all Art Cinema uses psychologically complex characters that don’t seem to have clear traits or objectives. Some characters just question their objectives and at times they may even be alienated. Every film in this era can be analyzed in a different way; some you should look at literally and some you should think deeply about. In Persona it seems to be easy enough to analyze by taking what is being shown to you literally. This film seems to contain complex and somewhat alienated characters, realistic settings, some random…

    • 1706 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Babette contrasts with the sisters Martine and Philippa. This contrast is made clear through the different elements of the production design. Maritine and Philippa dress similar in blue and have fair skin while Babette is darker skinned. Babette’s cross necklace represents her French Catholic background which further contrasts her from the sisters. The statue of Christ in the sisters’ home is often shown in the background and reminds the audience of what a central role religion plays in their life. Indeed the sister’s religious beliefs play such a pivotal role in their lives that Babette’s foreign cuisine (quails, a live turtle, wine) appears as a form of witchcraft to them because they have lived their life rejecting the pleasure of flesh. The sisters regard food’s objective as merely providing nourishment. They are shown eating plain foods such as soaked bread and coffee. Babette adopts their simple meals, but when the opportunity arises to prepare an exquisite dinner she takes it.…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays