This is a review of Babette’s Feast (1987)
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4 January
This is a review of Babette’s Feast (1987)
* Contains spoilers *
Babette's Feast, newly released by the BFI (British Film Institute), is not exactly a suspenseful film, but there are tensions, and they have kept me pondering it, and so not writing this review, for several weeks. (Which is very often a sign of a good film, i.e. that it should defy instant analysis.)
When one does not have an original screenplay, but an adaptation, one never quite knows not just what has been changed*, but also how things made manifest in the written work (which may be so ambiguously, provisionally or tangentially) have been embodied on the screen. In some ways, cinema can be more indefinite than a novel, in others it almost cannot fail to state things.
One is the location. Quite apart from what the narration tells us, we can see that it is a small community in a remote spot, and we might subconsciously, even before shown anyone who lives there or, less still, having mention of a sect, infer qualities in those who (choose to ?) live there - and not be so far wrong ?
As to the buildings that, real or specially constructed, we see, no amount of lulling the senses can conceal the fact that they are smaller on the outside – this, though, is not Doctor Who**, and the scenes with which we are presented could often not be accommodated by these modest dwellings, even allowing for the cinematographer being the other side of where a wall should be.
There may be several reasons for having the exterior shot in a way that draws attention to proximity, intimacy and even claustrophobia, but I shall choose the fact that the isolation and vulnerability to external forces are heightened by the smaller scale, giving a sense both of how precarious life there is and that it may be prone to further influences for change. At any rate, that is how I interpret it.
This is Jutland, in Denmark, in – in the present, as shown – the early latter half of the nineteenth century, but what I need to find out is how the various wars between the Scandinavian countries had affected the population geography (I refuse to say ‘demographics’), and whose territory this island had been at various times. I say this because the spirit of August Strindberg hovers over this film for me, and I want to understand things a little better. That inquiry must wait for another time…
Strindberg is first very evident when Babette goes away to make arrangements for the feast, and the sisters have to take over duties that they last performed before she came, in the caricatured responses of those on the receiving end of their charity to the food presented and the fact that it is late, but the whole notion of this sort of meals-on-wheels generosity chimes with later works, too, such as his A Dream Play from 1902. (Does one, though, attribute that feeling to Babette’s Feast because of Karen Blixen or because of the screenwriter?)
Where the feeling is most relevant is at the feast itself, with the sharply defined moments of what neighbour says (or whispers) to neighbour, which is a sort of kaleidoscopic one for me, because I did not feel myself tasked with keeping track of who had a specific grudge with whom until shown them again, but of having an impression of the levels of unrest or discontent – the Strindbergian element is in people saying to each other what, dreams apart, they ordinarily would not reveal, and goes all the way back to a puzzling little play such as Easter.
They most discomfort the two worrying sisters (and they, too, I found it hard to distinguish from each other, though not for want of concentration*), who appear to see any ignoble behaviour or sentiment as ultimately a bad reflection on their father, without seeming to appreciate that maybe, even if he was not a charlatan who just wanted power and authority, he knew these people’s nature better than they do.
That is one of the tensions, but, preceding it, has been the sisters’ regret of allowing Babette to prepare this meal, which they have come to see as beastly and probably satanic, after encountering the live ingredients: in a paranoid response – and the elderly sisters are highly skittish – they come to suspect that the act of kindness is for their ill, and tell all the guests so, who are ready to believe it.
As I see it, the general unrest could, depending on our disposition and mood, affect us differently – we could reject it as their baseless superstition, or think that there might be, in the unfolding of this feast (the English word is laden with significance from Belshazzar to The Last Supper to the feast that is Christmas) be something sinister. As to the latter response, for example, why is the instruction for General Löwenhielm’s glass to be kept topped up, and is he meant blessing by it, or some harm of over-indulgence ? In those terms, indeed, what does this elaborate food and drink for these simple-living people mean ?
That question we come to later, but the night itself embodies dissension and enmity, which almost seem brought on by the feast and clearly disquiet the passive and peaceful daughters of the pastor : to what, one imagines them thinking, has all his work come, if the reaction to this meal in his honour takes the form of the uncovering of deep grudges and hatreds ? Is that the truth, or is there some more magical act of redemption going on, which means that, when the guests (other than Löwenhielm and his aunt, who have already left for home) dance around the well-head and sing, they are truly and fully reconciled to each other, rather than this being a papering-over the cracks ?
At any rate, the naive pair, with no idea how much such elaborate food and expensive wine would cost, have been blessed by Babette (along with the villagers), and had not figured that she could possibly have spent her whole winnings on it all. They had been mean enough to wonder how they would manage without her, if she went back to France – and, indeed, we are shown them struggling, and with the grumpy reactions of those to whom they give charity.
The fact that she did not have anywhere to go to in France does not explain the staggering decision not to buy herself an easier life somewhere else, and that generosity is so baffling that it almost only works on the level of parable, very much in what we are told of Griselde in Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale. It remains a puzzle to me, even on some reading (as I have heard critics advance) that wants to see the feast itself as the healing sacrament that these people needed : if there is a synthesis between the pious, remote North and the South of the warmer Parisian lands, then this is really no more than Löwenhielm says, who maintains a commentary on food and drink, both at the level of identification, and at that of gourmandizing wit and wisdom.
It is his presence at table, he who is used to this quality of food from when Babette worked elsewhere, that strikes an alternative note, and, whilst he might guide the others into enjoying the food, he seems as if in a dream, not being amazed at how such things could be in a poor and remote place. He leaves without seeing Babette, and, outside her kitchen, she takes no part in the feast, since she directs the others what to serve and how. It has all led up to the sisters learning that she is not to leave them, with and because of this meal, and there the graciousness of the gesture remains, for me, at the level of allegory.
End-notes
* For example, I know that Tove Jansson was Finnish, but she came from the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, and had Swedish as her primary language. However, this map delineating the extent, at various times, of the Swedish empire shows that, although it encompassed parts of Norway and Finland, and even Bremen and Riga, it did not touch Denmark, for some reason.
However, as flicking through one of these books of the type 385 Films You Must See Before Breakfast revealed, I now know that the story has been translated to Denmark from Norway anyway.
** TARDIS – to come…
*** I could not swear that the daughter whom her father delights in having subject to the philandering of the French musician Papin, just so that he can impiously delight that he has been snubbed, is not the same one whom Löwenhielm seeks to court, even if parity would have one disappointed suitor for each.
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