John's Favorite Films - The Series Begins

Babette's Feast (Gabriel Axel, 1987)

by Dr. Gareth Higgins

Eating in movies is often portrayed as a sacrament, and this is how it should be. The best of sacramental food films (along with 'Eat Drink Man Woman', and 'What's Cooking?', to name just two) is 'Babette's Feast', a Danish film about a religious sect that has lost the meaning of the words it has come to worship. They live on a cold, isolated island, where the weather never seems to stray beyond offering different shades of grey wetness. Their regular meetings are facilitated by two women, daughters of the now deceased pastor who was 'greatly respected and perhaps a little feared'. His followers meet to honour their founder, even though he has long since gone. Their worship songs sound like particularly sharp fingernails scratching slate, and include such hopeful phrases as 'Only when we have achieved sinless perfection will God dwell with us'.

Flashbacks reveal that the pastor would not let his daughters marry the men they loved because he needed them to help run the sect. These revelations provide horrifying examples of how well-meaning religious people sometimes damage others by manipulating them in the service of a deeply felt calling. Our horror should be a wake up call. However, the film makes it clear that the pastor was trying to love his children in the only way he knew how; perhaps we need to be more forgiving of our parents. People are sent to the island to be with the sect for penance – a bit like a more austere equivalent of being forced to watch television evangelism stations for a month without respite. Members of the sect greet each other with words like 'Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and delight shall kiss each other'. They seem to take pleasure in the words without ever experiencing their meaning. A soldier visits the island and tells the daughters of his experience at the Royal Palace – 'Piety was fashionable at court', he says, which made me think of the way some governments imitate the Pharisees, using the words of Christ without considering the substance.

And, into their midst comes an outsider – Babette, fled from France, with nothing but her memories and culinary skill. She has lost everything in the revolution, and is broken and alone. The daughters take her in – again revealing the warmth of community and self-giving that can only spring from a true appreciation of what it means to be human. She stays with them for a decade, helping around the house, providing the Dickensian gruel that they seem content to eat; and then one day a letter arrives. She has won the lottery – 10 000 francs – and the daughters are heartbroken because they assume this means she will leave them to return to her true home in France. When she asks if they would let her cook them a meal, they consent, and the whole sect is invited.

As the preparations for the meal develop, the sect members suspect the worst: the food seems colourful, exotic even. Dangerously worldly. The audience sees the most incredible edibles – strange pastries, awe-inspiring fruit, and, in a very politically incorrect move, a live turtle – and our mouths water. Meanwhile, the sect members develop a creeping sense of fear that the 'world, the flesh, and the devil' have intruded upon their lives. They have nightmares of the food sending them to hell and live in fear of anything different to what they know.

When the meal finally happens the sect has agreed to stiffen its resolve; to sit upright, to not have eye contact with the food, and, at all costs, NOT TO ENJOY A SINGLE BITE. But the soldier, now an old man, has been invited too, and he is in touch with himself enough to recognise something in the food – beauty, perhaps even the presence of something bigger than themselves. He also recognises the menu; he ate the same meal years before at the elite Café Paris, where such a banquet famously cost 10 000 francs.

Gradually, as the meal continues (and as the audience wills it), the sect members loosen up, they begin to talk about their happy memories of their late founder, and a miracle grows among them. Joy enters the room, and the people are suffused with a sense of the presence of God and community. They begin to apologise to each other for petty schisms, embracing like old lovers, and the night finishes with the diners dancing together in the village square, delighting in each other's presence, and perhaps even forgetting to thank the woman who gave this grace to them. Of course, in the morning it dawns on us that Babette has spent all her money on creating the feast that has healed them. She cannot go back, but will now devote what is left of her life to the community and its upkeep. But, as she wisely says, an artist is never poor. She, and we, have been reminded of what really matters.

This is a fable, and like all the best fables, especially the ones John told us, it tells the truth about what it means to be human.

But Babette's Feast is more than just the story of one woman's love for people who have been ungrateful. It is really about what Martin Luther meant when he said that to be a Christian was to 'Love God and sin boldly'. John knew deeply what this meant; as he was known to have ended blessings upon hearing confessions by instructing the person seeking penance and forgiveness and to 'go forth and sin BEAUTIFULLY'. In this context, he understood the word 'sin' to derive from the Greek word 'hamartia', an ancient archery term that means 'missing the mark'. We are made of clay, but are also beautiful works in progress; and there is enough religious inhumanity in the world without us needing to remain trapped in the systems that do not bring life. Many of us are like the sect members in 'Babette's Feast', who are so trapped in the past that when freedom is offered to them – literally – on a plate, one of their number initially responds by saying 'I'm fearful of my joy'. Their terror of the unknown, and guilt for the past has left them doomed to only repeat words that have been dead for generations.

Even the soldier is filled with regret – he abandoned his love for the army, where he rose through the ranks and had an 'honourable' career. But now, reminded of his love, he asks, 'Could many years of victory be seen as a defeat?' Babette introduces the one ingredient – I know some people might think it's turtle soup, but it's actually sacrificial love – that helps them raise their sightline above themselves. In the near-hallucinogenic haze of the food and wine, they discover hidden depths of grace and joy and life within themselves, things that had lain dormant for so long that they may not even remember when they last saw them (like Jesus, the film realises that every now and then, too much alcohol can be good for you – especially if your return transport is driven by a horse). And, in the moonlight after the meal, they dance, rediscovering not only their childlikeness, but their very humanity. And the reality of a relationship with God breathes in them again.

The story is evocative of what many people believe God has done for us; but we may feel something new when we watch the transformation that the film reveals. The joy of seeing grace experienced by people like us gives us a God's eye view. It leaves me wondering how God must enjoy it when we catch glimpses of the life God made for us…Or, as Meister Eckhart wrote (and John often quoted), 'The eye with which I see God is God's eye seeing me.'

The island itself reminds me of Iona, the Scottish isle where I once made a retreat. What I found there was that you cannot live in the city unless you make space for yourself in the desert, but only the few are called to live in the desert. Babette learns this truth, and puts it to good use, transforming a simple human plumbing need – to have fuel – into a kind of love affair. One of the characters speaks of her as one who 'can be understood only through the hidden regions of the heart'; and perhaps 'Babette's Feast' might cause you to reflect on your own need for a desert experience, or, on the other hand, the need to come out of the desert for a good feed. We have lost our sense of taste; and perhaps that's the same thing as losing our way.

If you find subtitles difficult, then I would encourage you to remember that some of the best things in life need to be worked at. Also, it's not a good movie if you're a vegetarian (which I share with you for about 22 hours a day); the poor turtle doesn't make it to the end, but he does provide a little blessing. I asked a clergyman once what he thought the solution was to the challenges facing the church in Northern Ireland, where legalistic stiffness has been the order of the day for centuries. He said 'The solution is the hard gospel. The hard gospel is not that you don't say the 'f-word', or that you don't sleep with your girlfriend before you're married. The hard gospel is that you love God and you love your neighbour as yourself. End of story.' I know that this may rankle with some. I know that personal morality is important. I know that we need to make choices that will imitate the pattern of Christ. And yet, I can't deny that what my clergy friend said was about as true as a statement can be in a post-modern world. 'Little children, love one another.' That's Babette's modus operandi. That's her gift to the dormant community. That's what John embodied for so many of his friends. That's the hard gospel, and that's all we need.