Babette's Feast

Locations
Call Number: Blu-ray FLC-DAN Babette's
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 1-week checkout	Blu-ray FLC-DAN Babette's	1-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult A/V 1-week checkout	Blu-ray FLC-DAN Babette's	1-week checkout	On Shelf

Adapted from a story by Isak Dinesen.
Originally released as a motion picture in 1987.
Release date: Jul. 23, 2013.
Special features: New 2K digital film restoriation; New interview with actor; Documentary about the author; New visual essay; New interview; Trailer; Plus, A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Mark Le Fanu.
Stephane Audran, Jarl Kulle.
At once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning Babette's Feast is a deeply beloved cinematic treasure. Directed by Gabriel Axel and adapted from a story by Isak Dinesen, the layered tale of a French housekeeper with a mysterious past who brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late nineteenth-century Denmark.
Blu-ray, widescreen, 1.66:1, 16x9; DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.
Requires Blu-ray player.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

One of my favorite movies EVER. submitted by lisa on July 31, 2019, 6:25pm And I've seen a lot of movies.

Excellent movie, at the end of a long day where 9 other DVDs I borrowed were worthless and unwatchable. submitted by Tassos on November 27, 2021, 10:59pm First, Many here apparently do not understand what a review is. It is NOT a stupid trivia game where you give the correct answer and do not have to show why it is correct. You are supposed to explain WHY the movie was terrible or excellent, and do so carefully, so as not to spoil its plot and ending for those who would want to see it afterwards.

Many here write very brief 'reviews', ranging from a mere one line of text, down to.. one word (a troll here writes reviews on almost all dvds and they consist of only one word, "awesome". Which is the same if he or she called them all'awful'.

Now back to my review. As I say in the title, I am lucky if I like 1 in 10 DVDs I borrow. Most are so bad, they are unwatchable, others I only see for a few scenes before I return them. Sometimes it feels that only 1 in 100 movies is really any good. Most old movies are just as bad, only 1 in 1000 becomes a classic masterpiece. The others are forgettable, and almost unwatchable today.,

However, it is true that Scandinavian movies seldom disappoint me. There are of course universally admired directors like the great Ingmar Bergman, but I don't like all of his films equally. I am very fond of "Wild Strawberries" and recommend it to my friends, few of which probably ever saw it, Their loss...

This is a good movie, but I suspect many will like it for the wrong reasons, without thinking much about it.

Again, I don't want to spoil it for the very few who will read this and then want to see it.

One has to be patient with the movie's first scenes, where a bunch of ultra-puritanical faithful, almost a cult, really, meets in a room and sings Hymns (I wish they showed us where they discuss the Bible instead of just singing, but they don't), a pastor forbids both his daughters to marry perfectly good suitors because they are so helpful to him (the selfishness!), and so on.

Babette is played by the late, great French Actress Stephane Audran, who succeeded in real life to marry both a famous actor (a superstar, really, JL Trentignant) and an equally famous director (Claude CHabrol).

It was delightful to see her spend a fortune in materials and another in her own artistic labor, to just prepare a first-class French dinner for 12 clueless (all except one) hosts, who don't even want to appreciate it. It is not just good, it is a work of art, and she correctly thinks herself as an artistE (not artist, as the careless subtitles say). Most people, especially the numerous students in this area, who consider Pizza and ice cream and hamburgers, or even steaks and the Thanksgiving turkey, as food, and... good food at that, of course need to have a huge imagination to understand how different Babette's own feast is...

Babette's Feast submitted by leighsprauer on April 20, 2022, 10:02pm This is just a lovely movie. The title character is the maid & cook for two spinster do-gooders who run their father's very small church after his death. One of the older women was wooed by a Swedish general when she was young, but was discouraged from pursuing earthly love by her puritanical father. Her sister had a promising career as an opera singer, but turned it down in favor of serving her church at home. As they age they are happy, but alone, and lead an austere life, that although rewarding, is not particularly joyful. Babette cares for them humbly for 14 years, but when she comes into some money, she decides that instead of returning to her native Paris, she will cook a feast for them - a real French dinner. The feast is truly a masterpiece.
As it turned out, we watched this movie on Holy Saturday, which for Christians is the eve of the most important feast day, and it was perfect timing. Coming out of Good Friday, which is a day of fasting, Holy Saturday is a day of preparation for the Easter feast. Babette's Feast is about the good-ness of pleasure: there is a time to fast, but to be fully human is to love, and to create, and to live fully, and to feast. As Babette's dinner guest says, "Hallelujah!"

(One important note: we watched the version that was dubbed in English. Bad idea. The voice actors were not great, and the translations were wildly different from the subtitles, which I assume were based on the script. It was very distracting and sometimes confusing. Either get the English subtitles only, or learn Danish.)