I bought this Danish film back at the same time when I bought the Dutch film, "Antonia's Line" (What I'm Watching #92). Both can easily be described as women's stories. Both deal with women who in the company of other women discover grace and strength, and so it's no surprise that having originially seen both of these films many years ago, I conflated their individual success as cinematic art.
My review of "Antonia's Line" clearly expressed the fact that I had forgotten just how amazing that movie is. Alas, every yin has it's yang.....
"Babette's Feast" is a dog. It's pandantic in it's treatment of theme, it's lugubrious in its creation of atmosphere, and it's infantile in its spoon-feeding of storyline. The acting reminds one of a compitent high school performance of an Ibsen or Chekov play--Everything happens like it's supposed to, but none of it engenders any emotional or aesthetic involvement from the audience.
As to the positive reviews from reputable sources found on the trailer feature, they all left me dumbfounded. It must be a sentimental attachment to the orginal short story by Isak Dinesen; otherwise, these people are idiots.
Never one to hold back....and you know I usually enjoy something about whatever movie I make the time to see. Bottomline, skip Babette's feast, call Papa John's. You'll thank me in the morning!
Randy -
ReplyDeleteI loved Babette's Feast! I've always thought of it as food porn more than any other sort of thing - the story line and the mostly how it was filmed is, I thought, great. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
Have you seen "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover"? It
s amazing.
RFSJ