Reviews
Babette's Feast: the meal as an argument
Most food films open the kitchen in the first reel. This one keeps it shut for an hour, and that delay is the whole design.
The withholding
For most of its running time the film gives you boiled fish and ale-and-bread soup, photographed plainly and eaten in silence. The austerity is not set dressing. A community that has decided pleasure is suspect eats this way on purpose, and the camera agrees with them for as long as they are in charge.
When the feast finally arrives, it lands not as spectacle but as argument. You have sat through the counter-position for an hour, so the turtle soup is making a case rather than showing off.
What the long preparation buys
The cooking sequence is unusually procedural: ingredients arrive by boat, a live turtle is carried in, quail are boned. Axel shoots it close and quiet, without music, and that choice does two things at once. It makes the labour legible, and it keeps the food from becoming an advertisement.
Compare it with the way most contemporary food scenes are cut — fast, warm, scored — and the difference in intent is obvious. One wants you hungry. This one wants you to understand what is being spent.
The table scene
The guests have agreed in advance not to comment on the food. It is a vow taken out of fear, and it gives the scene its comedy: eleven people eating something extraordinary while discussing the weather.
The vow also solves a problem that defeats most films about meals. Nobody has to say the food is good. The faces do it, and the dialogue stays free for everything else that is happening at that table.
The cost, stated plainly
Babette spends her entire lottery winnings — ten thousand francs — on one dinner for twelve people, and the film says so out loud at the end. That number is the point. A gift that leaves the giver with nothing is a different kind of gift, and the film has earned the right to say it without sentiment.
For a different treatment of food as labour rather than pleasure, see our note on kitchen scenes; for the opposite approach entirely, Tampopo.