Life Here is Hard and Cruel

By: Chris Valletta

The 1987 film Babette's Feast, directed by Gabriel Axel, takes place in the year 1871 on the western coast of Jutland in a small Protestant town. The story involves a minister who founded a community based off of his Protestant beliefs, although over time only a few followers still remained, including his two daughters: Martina and Philippa. As devotees to the Protestant religion, their lives revolved around repressed desires, consisting of the same boring chores and routine every single day. This included house chores and then eating beer soup and dried fish everyday. Both Martina and Phillipa were born into this culture and were extremely beautiful and intelligent women. The film takes place when Martina and Phillipa are much older and towards the end of their lives, but flashbacks to their youth are shown.

A member of the Swedish calvary by the name of Lorenz is sent to the town due to his conduct. After a period of time, Martina catches his eye and immediately falls in love with her. After getting to know her and her father (the minister), he begins to have dinner at the house. Eventually however, he leaves the dinner table one night in disgust and tells Martina "Life here is hard and cruel", implying that he wishes to never come back because of the hard and boring lifestyle of the people in the village. In another instance, a performer from Paris who believes his career is going down hill decides to go out to the Jutland coast to have some time to think by where the waves break. He then discovers Phillipa in church, noticing that she has the prettiest voice that he has over heard. He takes this opportunity to ask the minister if he can give her singing lessons to make her a professional, which he agrees too. Lessons go great but then one time the performer, Mr. Papin, kisses Philippa on the forehead after a well-done duet. After that, Philippa was nervous and no longer wanted lessons.

These two flashbacks were the most key parts of the movie because it shows the background of the minister's two daughters in a way of deep sympathy. These two beautiful women were essentially deprived of the two loves of their lives and a chance to get out of that town and to do something with their lives because of their Protestant minster father. This was the most apparent when Mr. Papin learned that Philippa no longer wanted to see him, he immediately stopped singing. When the minister noticed that he stopped singing, he began to laugh in joy as if he had won his daughter over this other man. Its also telling of the daughters severe repression since they could not even attempt to go against what their father had preached and refused their feelings in the meantime.

The plot then fast-forwards to when Martina and Phillipa are middle-aged and the minister is long dead. A French woman by the name of Babette shows up at their door with a letter from Mr. Papin who tells that she escaped the French Revolution and has nothing left since her family was killed. The women take Babette in as their servant. It is in this scene where we see that both Martina and Phillipa never moved on, staying in the same house doing the same exact thing everyday, with no husband or children. The plot then again fast-forwards another fourteen years, as Babette still remains doing servant work and Martina and Philippa are still performing the same activities everyday, now near the end of their lives. Then one day, Babette finds out that she has won the lottery in France that is worth 10,000 francs.

When Babette learns this, she decides to celebrate by preparing a feast at the house for the minister's 100th anniversary for Martina and Phillipa and the rest of his followers. Babette says that she will cook a "real French dinner." This starts the climax of the movie, where Babette starts to prepare the feast of her life for these people who have never even begun to see what pleasure really is. The sisters agree to let Babette cook, but under it all they are nervous about what could happen. For example, one of them has a dream where Babette is depicted as the devil and she is trying to tempt her with food. This shows fear of the unknown and the capacity of those who are brought up so single-minded, since these people had been eating and doing the same exact thing everyday their whole lives, and anything other than that with pleasure would be regarded as sinful and unacceptable.

One of the sisters even notices that Babette has brought wine and this greatly troubles her. She even goes so far as to the refer the preparation of the meal as a "witch's sabbath." In a meeting with the rest of the followers before the meal, they all agree to pretend as if they do not have taste during the meal. As the day of the meal comes, the sisters, along with the rest of the ministers remaining followers are present, in addition to the return of Lorens, who is a now a General and married to his wife. Babette prepares the dinner table with a table cloth, beautiful utensils, napkins, candles, and glasses for different types of beverages. This was a big difference from the usual barren wood table with one minuscule bowl. At first, the people stuck to the plan and tried not to acknowledge any pleasurable taste and spoke about anything aside from the meal. However, the General could not stop raving about the food and alcohol.

Eventually, the rest of the people at the table cannot resist the pleasure of the food and drink and do begin to loosen up and enjoy themselves. Course after course, drink after drink, more happiness, pleasure, and love enters the room. The General then comments that "mercy is infinite", and that everything that we reject has also been granted to us. Which implies that perhaps rejecting everything that gives us pleasure is not the right method to live life by since God has given us this opportunity to enjoy it. After an outpouring of love and emotion at the conclusion of the feast, Babette tells Martina and Philippa that she will not be going back to France since she spent all those earnings from the lottery on the meal. She also admits that she was once the head chef of the Cafe Ingles in Paris and used to make people feel happy like that all the time.

Overall, I thought the film was excellent and proved to be a great example of how repression and pleasure interact with each other. Repressing all things of pleasure is not a good way to live through life, yet taking pleasure in doses for what it is, is essential to enjoying life and is worth many treasures. For in many ways, having fun and enjoying oneself and others is the whole point of our existence. Martina and Phillipa never got to experience this pleasure until the end of their lives because of the religion and culture which they were raised in. Their lives were essentially wasted since they both were so talented and could've went to different places around the world with the men they loved and actually lived to their potential. It was more sad than anything to see that both Martina and Phillipa never moved on from home their entire lives, but there is hope after Babette showed them another side to life that they thought they could never acknowledge.