Material scarcity is not necessarily a shame

D'angelo 2022-01-13 08:01:20

The excessive lack of material and the extreme simplicity of life are not necessarily a shame, and the void of happiness cannot be filled with piety, praise and imagination alone. A feast makes those ugly and displeased people beautiful and harmonious. This is Babbitt’s art. She spends the huge prize money of winning the lottery to create a sumptuous dinner, not to show off that she was a famous chef in Paris, but It is to make these Puritans, who can only eat beer and boiled moldy bread every day, understand: What kind of connection exists between material pleasure and spiritual pleasure...

Danish director Gabriel Axel's 1987 work, Based on the novel by Isaac Dinason. The narrative is very calm, the characters in the play do not make any exaggerated performances, but some quiet humor and irony are hidden. Appears a kind of almost saint-like, extremely rare self-restraint. The film won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Excerpt from a few lines of dialogue-

"This strange little muscle of the tongue has accomplished a great and glorious deed for a man. But it is also a source of indulgence of ghosts and viruses. On that day when we solemnly salute the priest, we will use our Salute with his tongue. Pay tribute with all the attitudes he taught us."

"Compassion and sincerity meet, integrity and good fortune kiss. A man has his weaknesses and shortcomings. I believe he must make choices in his life. Trembling in danger, we must know that we are afraid, but not. Our choice does not need to be. When you open your eyes, a moment comes and we realize that compassion is infinite. We can only wait with confidence and accept with attitude. It. Compassion does not require additional conditions. Everything we have chosen has already affected us, and everything we have rejected has also affected us. Yes, we even regress to what we resist, because compassion and sincerity meet, Integrity and blessing, kiss each other."

When the two old women learned that they had eaten the huge prize in the Babbitt lottery, they said embarrassingly: But now, the rest of your life will be poor.
Babbitt took a step forward and smiled slightly: Artists are never poor.

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Extended Reading

Babette's Feast quotes

  • General Lorens Löwenhielm: This is Blinis Demidoff! And this most certainly is Veuve Clicquot 1860!

  • General Lorens Löwenhielm: One day in Paris, after I'd won a riding competition, some French officers invited me out to dine at one of the city's finest restaurants, the Café Anglais. The chef, surprisingly enough, was a woman. We were served cailles en sarcophage, a dish of her own creation. General Galliffet, our host for the evening, explained that this woman, this head chef, had the ability to transform a dinner into a kind of love affair, a love affair that made no distinction between bodily appetite and spiritual appetite.