Babette's Feast by Julian Baggini is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in late June.

A film of an ironic dinner for two very pious sisters whose lives are dotted with missed opportunities. In turn, they share the dinner with their community, redirecting the focus out wider unto an ensemble, whom which they can lose themselves in the dinner’s richness of flavor and pleasure. Very philosophical and never once went behind the scenes; what a feat!

I took a break from fiction to read this film critique. Baggini wants us to understand how filmmaking can be an effective medium for transmitting philosophy today. He looks at the themes of enjoyment, grace, present and future fulfilment that are at the heart of Christianity and how well Gabriel Axel has adapted them in his film. 

The good thing about the book is you can actually read it without seeing the film. The writing style is engaging and the scenes and dialogues from the movie and Blixen’s novel ground you in the larger historicity around this work. It’s one of the better books on film interpretation I have read till date. Through Baggini’s interpretations, you discover Axel’s craft and realise why this may be one of the favourite films of Pope Francis.

Babette's Feast (BFI Film Classics) by Julian Baggini is another strong volume in this wonderful series. Depending on your history with the film you may come away with a completely new perspective or at least a more nuanced one.

The first time I saw this film was simply as a film goer, in a small theater. The second time was in a film studies class where we were more concerned with filmmaking than film meaning, though the two are not completely separate. The third time was in a film and philosophy course where our guest speaker was another professor who also happened to be a Lutheran pastor. So this particular book brought all of these ways of viewing and understanding the film into one coherent work. I would have liked to have had more of Kierkegaard used but that is mainly because of personal preference. Baggini cites him often and many of the arguments are derived from Kierkegaard, so he is there. My preference is because of my work on Kierkegaard and Walker Percy's novels.

In the sections (mostly at the beginning and the end) where Baggini wants to view this film as "doing" philosophy or "being" a philosophical text versus illustrating or illuminating other philosophical thinking, I thought of the book Foucault at the Movies which was released a couple of years ago. There are a couple of excellent essays that address Foucault's interest primarily in films that he perceives as doing philosophy rather than simply being philosophical in nature. Foucault and the essayists there use, I think, a narrower idea of what a philosophical text is than what Baggini invokes here. While Baggini makes a strong case that this is more than just a film that references ideas, I don't believe it reaches the level of an actual original philosophical text. That doesn't take away from either the argument here or the film, just a matter of how narrowly or broadly one defines "doing" philosophy. You'll see many people, and I had some of them as students, who think as undergraduates they were doing philosophy when what they were doing was pretending to do philosophy. If you don't take your undergraduate years to learn, truly understand, those who came before, then you can stand on your tiptoes and not even reach their pant cuffs, but if you stand on their shoulders you can reach significantly higher. But these people need to sound like they are special when, in fact, almost every philosophy undergrad, myself included at the time, thought we were doing philosophy as well as learning it. To still believe it years later, well, Trump believes he was a good student at Wharton too. Doesn't make it so.

Probably the area where Baggini falls the flattest is when he presumes to speak for atheists and tell us what we think and how we think it. The level of arrogance there, coupled with blatantly ignorant claims, detracts from what was otherwise a wonderful interpretation and explication. But he has his beliefs and part of that is his belief, apparently, that he can tell the rest of us where our thinking is and where it falls short. Not just some, but for all of us. Yeah, not gonna happen. It just shows how flawed even the most attentive minds can be when they work in their blind spots.

I highly recommend this and think that it will offer wonderful insights into the film regardless of how you currently understand the film.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

The BFI Classic series, recently revamped with some rather snazzy new trade dress, has added a corker here. Its odd though because if you are coming to this monograph looking for the trivia and details of the gestation, making or reception of the film - you may be sorely disappointed (unless you really want to know what the Pope thought of it*). Indeed what it took the Rosemary's Baby BFI Classic half a book to argue, Baggini does in basically one sentence, claiming artistic triumph and genius for the film in an off the cuff statement before getting into the details of why. And Baggini's point becomes clear from his point of view. He loves Babette's Feast is great not just because it tells a wonderful story with clarity and artistry, but because it is actual philosophy.

I am very sympathetic to this point of view, as I studied philosophy, but not only did I study philosophy, but whilst studying I did it (this is not as usual as you might think - many philosophy students stick to regurgitating and looking at the responses to the big questions rather than giving them a go itself). He therefore examines what he means for a film to be a piece of philosophy (it posits the question, discusses the question and answers the question), and makes this one of the most entertaining pieces of Modern Philosophical writing I have read. The argument is that in there is no revelation in the ascetic puritan lifestyle of the Lutherans, but nor is there anything but a temporal joy in enjoyment of wonderfully cooked food. It is only within Babette's Feast itself that the two combine, that to show the joy in thee wonders of sensory pleasure can the sisters and their guests realise the depth and joy of the world and potentially the world beyond. Its good work in that it does not depend on you sharing the religious affiliations of the characters but rather everything to have this epiphany is held within the world of the film.

So while perhaps another stab at this topic would have considered Babettes's Feast within the genre of films about food and hedonism, Baggini does not bother. Bibi Andersson and her career barely gets a mention (and to talk about Babette's Feast without talking about Bergman feels weird). And yet its the personal nature of these responses which sometimes render the best read for a casual reader. And Babette's Feast is not a piece of work that sits importantly within a tradition, or a great Director's body of work. Its a mercurial, rather simple thing that in its base level tells a story which is interesting and uplifting, and digging below the surface as Baggini accessibly does here, offers ideas with which to fulfil your own existence with. This argument may well be better than the film actually is, but then that it what a monograph like this is for,

*The current Pope is a big fan naming it as a favourite when he was a cardinal, though he has be more judicious on its merits these days as its about Lutherans, and as a Papist (THE Papist) has to disapprove a bit.

[Netgalley ARC]