Reel Food & World Cinema

The final scene of Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci's Big Night  is a 5 minute is a meal between Primo, Secondo, and Cristiano. There's no dialogue between the characters, and the only sounds in the room come from Secondo making an omelette on the stove which he then cuts up and divides between the three of them. I feel like this scene could be interpreted two different ways. The first way: this meal and the silence represents disappointment.  The second way: this meal and the silence between Primo and Secondo represents the strong bond between the brothers and getting back up after a loss.  (Alton Brown writes " “ Big Night  is about getting up in the morning after you’ve gotten your ass kicked and making breakfast,” in the Metrograph, which I think rings true.) I think this scene shows that despite everything that happened over the course of the film, the brothers still have each other and they still have their kitchen. I also think the quiet way they wrap their ...

In Lasse Hallstr öm's 2000 film Chocolat , food represents the pleasures the people of the small town are being denied. For Josephine, it's freedom from her husband and the ability to be her own person. For Luc, it's freedom from his mother and Armande is denied the right to see her grandson. Vianne Rocher is apart of a Shamanic Legacy, which is very present in her character throughout the film. As a Shaman, Vianne's role in the film is to act as a clairvoyant of sorts. When people enter her shop she has them spin a wheel and uses what they see as a basis for what kind of chocolate they need. She refers to the wheel as a game and tells them she can guess their favorite chocolate off their answers, but I think it's more based on their answers, she is able to understand what chocolate will help them on a deeper level within their lives. In Food, Film and Culture , James Keller writes "The Shaman searches for the lost soul to capture and return." (Keller) ...

In Gurinder Chadha's 2001 film  What's Cooking  holiday traditions, multiculturalism, and ethnic identity are all presented through the 4 families and the various struggles faced by each member of said families. Holiday traditions are shown through the film as something the older generation wants to keep but the younger generation wishes to change. This is most evident in the Williams family, especially between Grace and Audrey. Grace, the grandmother of the family, wishes to keep Thanksgiving the way it was when she was still raising Ronald. She mentions how she always cooked 2 turkeys, and the house was always filled with families, not friends. Audrey changes this tradition by changing the stuffing in the turkey and inviting friends to spend the holidays with them. Multiculturalism applies to the films ability to show various cultures in LA, but can be specifically applied to the Avila family and the Nguyen family.  When Gina brings Jimmy Nguyen home, the Avila family i...

Last Tuesday in class, Dr. McNichols gave a lecture on the history of Mexico and its culture, especially focusing on the food. Her main focus, or at least what I thought was most important, was the Aztec's history, various Spanish foods, and the Mexican Revolution, which I now know was heavily inspired by the French Revolution. For some reason, I know a lot about the French Revolution, but I never knew about its impact on the world, or that it was connected in some way to the Mexican Revolution. Dr. McNichols's lecture was connected to Alfonso Arau's  Like Water for Chocolate,  or  Como Agua Para Chocolate , due to the period in which the film was set. We learned about the Mexican Revolution which lasted until 1917, which coincides with the start of the film in 1910. The de la Garza family lives on a ranch close to the border, and it's clear that this is a place affected by the revolution. The change in the social order that we learned about from Dr. McNichols during a ...

From reading Laurel Forster's "Futuristic Foodways: The Metaphorical Meaning of Food in Science Fiction Film" from Reel Food , I learned that in science fiction films is essentially a metaphor for power held by the "controlling, domineering power of the industrial complex" (Forster 253) Food represents control within ourselves and within society. In the world of Richard Fleischer's Soylent Green , food represents status and purity. People in the wealthy, upper class have access to fresh food and clean water, though still very scarce even for them, while everyone else is left with processed food like Soylent Green which, as we all know, is people. The upper class has the control, which gives them power to run businesses like Soylent Industries, and control half the worlds food supply, while spreading lies about what they're processing. I've been thinking a lot about Soylent Green  since I watched it on Tuesday night. It's such an interesting fi...

In Sandra Nettelbeck's Mostly Martha, love and romance are represented through food and recipes. The films main character, Martha, works as a chef in Hamburg, Germany at a restaurant called Lido. Martha is a closed off woman, who sticks to routine and likes order, despite being desperately lonely. She's seen reaching out to the people around her, her new neighbor and her sister, asking to cook for them. Cooking is seemingly all she knows. Where her skills lack in socializing, they soar in the kitchen. When tragedy strikes, Martha is left in charge of her 8 year old niece, Lina, who's mom was killed in a car crash. The relationship between Martha and Lina starts off strained. Despite being basically the same person, Martha and Lina don't know how to interact with each other. Martha only knows recipes, so she tries to map out blueprints for her relationships as well. She constantly tries to connect with Lina through food, while sort of failing in the other parenting areas...