Review of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) by David W — 04 Mar 2012

I've read stories about people who have near death experiences or flatline and wake claiming to have witnessed hell and, thus, repent and try to live better, more virtuous, or simply more pious lives.

What they saw was probably this movie. The first thing anybody should say about "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" is that it is at times violent and, at other times, unnervingly unpleasant (it goes without saying: NOT FOR CHILDREN).

Yet this film is not so perverse just for shock value. A number of critics have said that the movie is about raw emotion, but frankly they were probably stuck on their own revile at the movie. "The Cook.

.." is actually about the emotionlessness and mindlessness that is the action of eating and digesting. From here, there can be a number of metaphors and allusions based from eastern and western religious concepts.

The act of consumption, for instance, can also be a metaphor for Buddhism's chain of causation. Yet the allusions to Christianity are probably more on par, especially when you consider that the entire set of the film is apparently underneath the city streets.

If you want to analyze the film from a Christain context, consider the parable that "it is not what goes into a man, but what comes out of a man" and run with it. From this context as well, being that this movie is set in hell, there are really no redeeming personalities, not even the protagonists ("His Wife and Her Lover" -- Helen Mirren and Alan Howard correspondingly), whose last words to each other are "I'll save you some food.

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