Art and Beauty Depicted through a Meal in the Film Babettes Feast
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Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1987) tells the story of two Papist sisters of the Jutland coast of Denmark in the 19th century, Philippa (Bodil Kjer) and Martina (Brigitte Federspiel) whose strict religious lives are changed by Babette (Stephane Audran), a French woman who they took in as a housekeeper. Babette's family was killed during the French civil war and a past friend of Philippa and Martina's sent her to the sister's small cottage to be saved from her inevitable death in France. After fourteen years of working for the sisters in a small town where the people's faith was ruled by the scarcity related to the bare land, the rocky shore, the dull colours, the harsh winds, the stale bread, and the unsalted fish soup that they ate everyday, Babette wins the lottery and decides to pay the sister's back for their hospitality by cooking them and their disciples in the town an expensive French meal. The town's people experience the reconciliation that comes from their hymns but not from their heart through eating the meal; the food was the noticeable sign of the abundance that they refused to believe in. What the hymns and gentle words of the sisters and town's people could not accomplish was made apparent to their senses and mind through Babette's feast.
The theme of this academy award winning film (Best Foreign Film of 1987) is how an artist can bring light into the gray, dark lives of individuals through the passion and intensity that comes through his or her art form. In the case of Babette's Feast, Babette is the artist whose art is cooking, and through her art form, the feast that she creates for Philippa, Martina, and their religious disciples, she is able to show them the beauty in the world and the beauty in each other.
I have chosen one small clip and one large sequence in the film that help to explain how the film's camera work, images, and sound show this change within Philippa, Martina, and the town's people's lives as a result of Babette's creation; her feast. The first short clip shows what a meal is like for the sisters and the town's people before Babette's "feast". The second larger sequence is the sitting down and eating of the French meal that Babette creates for the sisters and the town's people, and how we can see the change in their demeanor in comparison to the small clip...