Babettes Gæstebud (1987)

Babettes Gæstebud (1987), better known by its English title, Babette's Feast, is a color film set in the late 1800s in village on the coast of Jutland in Denmark. The motion picture is based on a short story of the same name by Danish author Karen Blixen (also known as Isak Dinesen).  Gabriel Axel, another Dane, directed the movie, which stars Stéphane Audran as Babette.

Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kier) are the only children of a widowed Danish minister who is the founder of an austere pietistic Lutheran sect.  The daughters are named after Martin Luther and Luther's friend, Philipp Melanchthon.

A Swedish military officer, Lorens Löwenhielm (Jarl Kulle), and a French opera star, Achille Papin (Jean Philippe La Font), briefly court the sisters in their youth.  Löwenhielm withdraws because he believes himself unworthy of Martine, and Philippa rejects Papin after he makes a pass while giving her voice lessons in the parlor of her father's home.

The father dies, and the sisters -- who never marry -- spend their adult lives doing good works and holding together the sect founded by their father.  One stormy night, when the sisters are no longer young, a French widow, Babette, comes to their home with a letter of introduction from Papin, explaining that she had to flee France for political reasons.

After some initial hesitancy, the sisters take Babette into their home as their cook and housekeeper.  Babette enlivens the home and the community, adding herbs and special dishes to their bland diet and a French playfulness to transactions with the grocer and fishermen.

After more than a decade, Babette's quiet life with the sisters changes when the French lottery ticket bought for her yearly wins 10,000 francs.  The sisters assume Babette will return to France, and she considers it but decides to remain with them and spend her money providing a feast for the 100th anniversary of the birth of the women's deceased father.

Frightened by the arrival of the quail and a huge sea turtle that are to be made a part of this feast, the sisters and members of the sect are reticent about the meal.  At the request of his aunt, who is a respected member of the sect, Löwenhielm joins the party.  Married to a noblewoman and having won favor in the Swedish court by dropping pious sayings learned while courting Martine, Löwenhielm is now a General.  His praise of the food and wine overcomes the timidity of the others, who partake of the glorious repast Babette provides.

Löwenhielm remembers the haute cuisine at the Cafe Anglais in Paris prepared by a woman chef.  He makes a speech incorporating the Psalm he once heard in Babette's home when her father was alive. "Mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed."  (Ps. 84:11 in the Douay-Rheims Bible.) The Church understands this to be a reference to Christ's unity of person but it is not presented that way by Löwenhielm.

The strange and wonderful food and drink weakens the psychological boundaries of the sect members.  Old grudges seem to resolve and longstanding worries seem to dissolve. The sect members conclude the evening by dancing around a well the way Danes dance around the tree at Christmas.

Afterward, Babette admits she was the chef at the Cafe Anglais to whom Löwenhielm referred.  She tells the sisters that she has spent all she had on the feast and will remain to work for them.  No one in France who meant anything to her is still alive anyway, so there is no point in going back.

In reflecting on the film, one wonders how long in real life the bliss would have lasted for the sect members since it was produced by the rich meal and wine to which they were unaccustomed.  It seems likely that the next morning they would have been more than a little embarrassed by their behavior and felt as if they had not quite been themselves.

As Christians, we know that good food and good wine do not have the power in themselves to bring lasting change in the human soul, which is comprised of the intellect and the will.  Thus, either the supposed transformation of the sect members was only transitory, or something supernatural occurred.

Many Catholics and other Christians think the film has a profoundly Christian message.  Catholics see it as affirming the goodness of creation against a heretical Manicheanism. Many see the meal as Eucharistic and Babette as a Christ-figure, sacrificing herself for the good of others.  One author sees the film as portraying Luther's theology of grace.  Another sees it as epitomizing the theology of Kierkegaard.

Even granting a measure of latitude for "artistic license", however, the film is a poor metaphor for Holy Thursday.  The essence of Holy Thursday was Christ's institution of the priesthood and Holy Communion, empowering the priest -- through an act of consecration -- to transform bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ for consumption by the faithful.  In Babette, there is no priesthood, no words of consecration, and hence no transubstantiation; there is only a meal.  A Last Supper that is only a meal might be considered sacred by some Protestants but surely not by orthodox Catholics.

While the well-intentioned but floundering sect members needed the sacramental graces of the Church, one wonders if the Babette enthusiasts are not projecting their own views onto a film where the director, and the author of the short story on which the film was based, might have intended something entirely different than a Eucharistic metaphor.

Those who see the feast as Eucharistic make much of Babette's supposed sacrifice, but there was no sacrifice.  Babette's art was cooking, and spending her money to create a memorable meal was an indulgence, not a sacrifice.  Near the end of the film, Babette admits that the meal was done at least in part for her own gratification, saying, "It was not just for you", meaning it was for herself as well, and that an "artist is never poor".  In the short story, this is even clearer:  Babette says, "For your sake? . . . No, for my own."

Much is also made of the fact that there were twelve at the dinner table. Interestingly, there were only 11 until Löwenhielm was invited.  Thus, the number symbolism -- if any was intended -- is a reversal of the Last Supper, where there were 12 until Judas's betrayal, then only 11. But, perhaps there is no symbolism at all.   Many believe twelve is the perfect number for an elegant dinner party.

In the film, Papin talks about how some day Philippa will sing in heaven, and Philippa tells Babette that in heaven she will delight the angels with her cuisine.  Aside from the fact that angels do not have bodies to delight with food, one might consider that if singers and chefs focus on their art in heaven, then heaven is merely a continuance of life on earth and might as well be achieved by science.

Remember that a metaphor is first and foremost a figure of speech, which implies that there is a speaker who is using the figure. The "speakers" in the film were Karen Blixen, the author of the short story, and Gabriel Axel, the director of the film.

According to a website devoted to Karen Blixen, she came from a Unitarian family and her religious views were consonant with those of the Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard, who did not believe in an ecclesial relationship to God.  Also, ironically given the food theme, Blixen had stomach problems, was perhaps anorexic, and died of malnutrition or starvation.

The Blixen site says the Babette story is about "pietism and the sensuality of food".  (Pietism is a religious current that emphasizes personal piety rather than church membership and participation in the sacraments.)

Here are two quotes from Blixen's short story on which the film was based:

"Of what happened later in the evening nothing definite can here be stated. None of the guests later on had any clear remembrance of it. They only knew that the rooms had been filled with a heavenly light, as if a number of small halos had blended into one glorious radiance. Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity. Long after midnight the windows of the house shone like gold, and golden song flowed out into the winter air."

"When later in life they thought of this evening it never occurred to any of them that they might have been exalted by their own merit. They realized that the infinite grace of which General Löwenhielm had spoken had been allotted to them, and they did not even wonder at the fact, for it had been but the fulfillment of an ever-present hope. The vain illusions of this earth had dissolved before their eyes like smoke, and they had seen the universe as it really is. They had been given one hour of the millennium."

Based on the above quotes from the short story, it seems that Blixen did see her characters as having received some kind of grace that night, although it is difficult to distinguish what she describes from the predictable effects of a good meal and an abundance of wine.  Perhaps Blixen meant to describe the natural grace of which good food is a part, or perhaps she meant the diners received a transitory supernatural grace.  There is nothing, however, to suggest that Blixen intended the dinner to be a metaphor for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as the Catholic Babette enthusiasts maintain.

As for Gabriel Axel, he is a gourmand married to a French woman.  Axel once told an interviewer that his wife could prepare all the dishes from Babette's Feast.  In 1968, Axel made a feature length motion picture called Danish Blue.  The title does not refer to blue cheese but to blue movies.  It is a propaganda film advocating the legalization of pornography.  According to the Wikipedia entry:

"The film mixes interviews, reconstructions and fiction in playful fashion, seeking to ridicule and undermine Denmark's censorship laws at the time.  The film may be said to have been successful in its mission, since a year after its release Denmark completely legalized pornography.

"The film was banned in France but released in both England and the USA.  It started a whole wave of documentary films about pornography in Denmark."

I am neither a theologian nor an expert in film or literature, but I believe that insofar as the story and film might be about more than art and food, Blixen and Axel's intended message was one of naturalism -- the idea that beatitude can be attained by natural means.  That, of course, is a beatitude without the beatific vision.  Such an interpretation fits with Blixen's statement that the sect members that night had "been given one hour of the millennium" (during which Christ rules on earth -- something that Catholics do not take literally), and with Axel's promotion of pornography, which I suppose he mistakenly believes makes for a psychologically healthier society.

In short, I do not believe that Babette's Feast has a Catholic or even a generic Christian message. It does, however, have lovely cinematography and an enjoyable glimpse of 19th century Swedish style in the interior of Löwenhielm 's father's home.  For these, I give the film three roses.

The White Countess (2005)

The White Countess (2005) stars the late Natasha Richardson as Sofia Belinskaya, a widowed Russian countess reduced to working as a taxi-dancer and occasional prostitute in a mean bar in Shanghai. Her costar is Ralph Fiennes as Todd Jackson, a former State Department employee and diplomat who lost his wife in one terrorist attack, and his daughter -- and his vision -- in another. The story is set in Shanghai in 1936 and 1937, concluding with the Japanese attack on that city in August, 1937, that marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Sofia lives in a cramped slum apartment with her ten-year-old daughter, Katya (Madeline Daly); her mother-in-law, Olga (Lynn Redgrave); her sister-in-law, Grushenka (Madeline Potter); and her husband's uncle and aunt, Prince Peter (John Wood), and Princess Vera (Richardson's real-life mother, Vanessa Redgrave). Their kindly neighbor, Samuel Feinstein, is played by Allan Corduner.

Sofia and her in-laws are "White Russians", émigrés who fled the communist takeover in Russia. We are not told when they left Russia, when or how Sofia's husband died, or how long they have been in Shanghai. We only know that Sofia has been doing this work for "too long". Surely, however, she has not been taxi-dancing for the nearly 20 years since the 1917 revolution or the nearly 14 years since 1923 when the civil war ended.  Moreover, their daughter is only ten. Perhaps the family left Russia in the late 20s or early 30s and perhaps Sofia's husband provided for them all until he died.  But how he died is a mystery.

The family is entirely dependent financially on Sofia and, with rare exception, they show little love for Sofia. Her sister-in-law and mother-in-law especially look down on her, even as they avail themselves of the money she faithfully brings home, and the sister-in-law labors to drive a wedge between Sofia and her daughter. There are not enough beds for everyone, but when Sofia comes home from work at dawn, the uncle feigns sleep rather than give her his bed.  Although occasionally Sofia speaks her mind, for the most part she bears their maltreatment with a patient long-suffering that touches the heart.

As for Todd Jackson, he was at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 after World War I, and involved in the failed League of Nations that was established by that treaty. Now blind, disillusioned, repelled by international affairs, and a little unbalanced psychologically, he finds relief frequenting seedy bars. In his meanderings, he meets and befriends a Mr. Matsuda (Hiroyuki Sanada) who, unknown to Jackson, is an advance man for the Japanese attack that will occur in August, 1937.

Sofia and Jackson meet at her workplace when she intervenes to protect him from two thugs about to mug him. Jackson fantasizes about having his own nightclub, where he can control the environment. After placing all he has on a racetrack bet, he wins enough to implement that plan, choosing Sofia as the "centerpiece" and assuring her that her income as his hostess will mean she will no longer need to prostitute herself.

Although Jackson makes no sexual demands on Sofia and they have a relatively formal relationship for the year leading up to the Japanese attack, the two gradually reach toward each other. By the dramatic conclusion of the film, their private worlds are torn apart and they have found refuge with each other.

Except for Sofia, each character fantasizes about an ideal future:  the in-laws dream of a restored social life in Hong Kong with other aristocratic refugees, Katya dreams of a boat trip up the river to Soo Chow, Jackson dreams of the perfect bar, and Matsuda dreams of the glorious triumph of Japanese imperialism.  To the extent that Sofia dreams, however, it is only of the beauty and purity of the past.

Natasha Richardson had reverence for the character she played, describing Sofia as a woman of dignity and inner grace. Richardson gives life to those qualities in her sensitive portrayal. Among the most memorable is a sequence early on when another émigré, a younger man who had played tennis with Sofia during their teen years in Russia, comes to work in the bar where Sofia dances. He approaches her with great respect, almost awe, and before being hustled back to work by the bar manager, kisses her hand tenderly. This brings back memories to Sofia, and one feels the bittersweet longing set in motion by his tribute when, back home after the night's work, she dreams of Russia while waiting for her bed to be free.

In my view, a serious flaw in the film is the complete absence of Sofia's deceased husband from the story. There are no photographs, no memories of him, only a comment from an in-law that Sofia is bringing shame to his memory. A positive aspect is that there are no bedroom scenes or nudity. There are some unsavory goings-on in the various bars. These events seem integral to the story, however, and do not seem improper for viewing by adults. Obviously, the picture is not for children.

Satan Never Sleeps (1962)

Satan Never Sleeps is a 1962 motion picture directed by Leo McCarey and based on a novel by Protestant China missionary daughter, Pearl S. Buck. It was not a commercial success and it is easy to understand why.

The script uses the same light humor and silly interaction between a grumpy older priest (Fr. Bovard played by Clifton Webb) and a bumbling younger cleric (Fr. O'Banion played by William Holden) that worked in McCarey's Going My Way.  In this film, however, those antics fall flat because McCarey transposes them onto two incredibly serious and grim subjects -- the brutality with which the Chinese communists persecuted the Chinese Christians and Christian missionaries in the late 1940s, and the marriage of a woman to her rapist so that the child born of the rape will know his father.

A positive aspect of the film is that it accurately depicts such tragic events as the communists trashing the interior of the church, tearing down the crucifix, putting up Chairman Mao's picture where the crucifix used to be, and using the church for communist indoctrination sessions.  That is just what the Reds did many places in real life.

Another positive thing is that for the most part both priests are courageous.  And, Fr. O'Banion maintains his chastity despite being ardently pursued by a physically attractive and romantically aggressive young woman (Siu Lan played by France Nuyen).

Unfortunately, the film is riddled with such nonsense as a scene where Siu Lan smiles and waves flirtatiously at Fr. O'Banion while he is kneeling during a Mass offered by Fr. Bovard right after the priests discover that most of the Chinese Catholics have deserted the church in fear of the communists, who have just taken over the town.

Later, when a local ex-altar boy turned communist (Ho San played by Weaver Lee) rapes Siu Lan, it is such a jarring departure from all the silliness that it is as if one is watching a different movie.  And, when Ho San converts back to Catholicism after losing status with the communists for being too individualistic, one questions the sincerity of his re-conversion.

As if that transition did not make impossible demands on the viewer, Ho San then marries Siu Lan and when their baby is baptized by Fr. O'Banion, the silliness is reintroduced.  I found it offensive that this supposedly "happy ending" is treated with the same fluffiness as the conclusion of any television sit-com from the 1970s.

I would really like to see a new version of this film with the screenplay re-written as a drama that does justice to the very serious questions presented.  It might be quite good.  As it is, the only value the movie has is its accurate portrayal of Chinese communist atrocities and the heroic resistance of the Chinese Catholics, who tear down Mao's picture and try to raise the Cross again. For that I give the film three roses.

The Fugitive (1947) - based on The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

The Fugitive (1947) is a lovely, luminous film directed by John Ford.  It is a must for traditional Catholics.  I am surprised that it has not been given more recognition.  Henry Fonda, playing the priest who is the main character, understood his role and never failed to maintain a priestly dignity even when exhausted, threatened, or subjected to humiliations.

The story is of the events in the last days of the life of a priest in a Central American country where religion has been outlawed and the clergy martyred.  The unnamed priest played by Fonda is the one cleric who has not yet been captured and assassinated.

In the Graham Greene book on which the film is based (The Power and the Glory, originally published in the United States as The Labyrinthine Ways), the country was Mexico and the priest was an alcoholic.  Although in the film the priest is merely traumatized (as if "shell-shocked") --  and not an alcoholic -- that does not necessarily detract from the power of the story.

The important thing is that the priesthood is larger than the priest -- something he acknowledges toward the end of the film.  And, while being pursued by the police, he faithfully fulfills his priestly duties by administering the sacraments when sought by believers, sometimes reluctantly and with conflict and always at the risk of his own personal safety.

The motion picture was made in Mexico and the cinematography by Mexican Gabriel Figueroa is unfailingly beautiful. Many of the actors are also Mexican.  Dolores del Rio is exquisite as the Indian woman who protects the priest.  A wonderful sequence takes place in the cantina where she works.  At the beginning of that sequence, a man sings a mournful ballad that reaches deeply into the soul, and before the end of the sequence, when Dolores del Rio dances on the bar to distract the police who are looking for the priest, one feels keenly the sacrifice she is making despite her apparent gaiety.

Another wonderful part of the film is when the fleeing priest is called upon to administer the last rites to a woman from a middle class family. Afterward, the men of the family prevail on the priest to say Mass -- something he cannot do because there is no wine to consecrate:  wine has been outlawed along with religion and apparently as part of the effort to suppress the sacraments.

Pedro Armendariz skillfully portrays the atheistic lieutenant who pursues the priest with determination but not without a level of inner conflict. An interesting supporting character is the "trickster" figure, an informant who sets up the priest for his ultimate capture.  Another is The Gringo, an American gangster, who helps the priest but refuses the sacraments as he lays dying.  These two roles are well developed and well played by J. Carrol Naish and Ward Bond respectively.

This is a film I will watch again and again.  My only complaint is that The Criterion Collection has not offered it as a DVD, because the celluloid could use the technical improvements that Criterion accomplishes so marvelously.  I purchased it second-hand in a Region 2 DVD from Spain in English with Spanish subtitles, changed the region code on my computer, and watched it that way. There is no language option for English without subtitles but I found the Spanish subtitles helpful because the audio is not as distinct as it might be.

Needless to say, I give the film five roses.