Babette's Feast Review

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BABETTE’S FEAST In a generation brought up watching shows in the television that shift from one scene to the next in under two seconds, the slow unfolding of the story that makes up Babette’s Feast may, to some extent, be difficult for some to appreciate fully, not because the plot is dragging, which it is not, but because it may be too slow for their tastes. Indeed, for one who is not used to European cinema but rather to the slam-bam pace of American movies, the film may be somewhat sluggish during the first few minutes but it cannot be denied that, by the end of the film, everybody are bound to sigh dreamily and stomachs are bound to growl in search of food that can rival Babette’s ‘quail in a sarcophagus’ dish. The slowness in which the plot unravels, thus, is a treat in itself because it ultimately keeps the viewer in a constant state of anticipation. In fact, by the time the film gets to the point where Babette is showcasing her cooking skills, one just does not want the film to end just so one can savor the sight of Babette’s culinary masterpieces. More than that, however, even one who does not watch European cinema frequently will inevitably appreciate and even admire the surprising moral presented at the end of the film, which allows one to see that the different scenes within the film, when taken as a whole, do make sense. Indeed, Babette’s Feast does not fail to linger in a viewer’s mind long after it has ended, making the viewer go back to certain scenes and linking it with other scenes in the film. That is something that most American movies fail to do. American movies fail to linger in one’s mind because, in essence, there is not much to think about them anyway. Once it is done, it is on to the next one, which is fine because the predictability that these movies innately possess may make them exciting for the moment but ultimately
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