Review of Babette's Feast (1987) by Kevin N — 13 Apr 2013

A sumptuous masterpiece. Writer-director Gabriel Axel's Academy Award-winning film is truly one-of-a-kind, an indescribable sensory experience. Once seen, one can understand its loving acceptance in both art house and mainstream circles.

It is one of the most deceptively simple films you are likely to see, but it is this dreamy and lax style that makes the film so ineffably beautiful. It's style is that of warm seduction, and its power is akin to the belly-warming sensation of liquor on a cold, long night.

In a small, unnamed town in Denmark, we find ourselves zeroing in on the two daughters of a revered minister. For the first half of the film we are given two backstories; each revolves around a different man, both of whom fell quickly and deeply in love with a respective daughter.

But in poetic unrequitedness, neither of the two women accept the men into their lives, and both men are eventually pushed out quickly. At first these vignettes seem like cruel gestures by Axel, and in any other film they would be; but as it turns out, Axel has larger and more innocent ideas on fate and purpose.

The heart of the story begins years later, after the girls' father is dead and they have taken on his religious sect. As a favor to one of the men from the previous vignettes, they take in a political refugee from Paris; this is Babette, and the movie is her story.

After the long set-up, I don't want to ruin the delightfully simple surprises that follow. Suffice it to say, the story involves a lovingly crafted feast, and as it is created, served, eaten and reflected upon, ideas of art, love, faith and sensuality are stirred into the same deeply satisfying mixture until the effect of actually tasting Babette's elegant feast is created through our own intake of the film via our own eyes and ears.

It's a truly moving statement on how similarly satisfying all of our five senses can be, and on what handcrafted beauty can mean in out lives. Besides working on an otherworldly emotional level, the film is aesthetically luscious and acted to a tee.

It's a film that everyone should see, preferably in the unwinding hours after a satisfying meal.