Anne Taylor Robertson Blog 5: Babett’s Feast

I really enjoyed this movie. It was a little frustrating to watch at times because it is an older film and it is not in English. The cinematography is also not the best, but that probably has to do with the time in which it was made, in the 1980’s. This movie tells the story of a young woman who ends up going to serve the people in a remote Norwegian town. She is French, and comes sort of mysteriously, with little reason as to why she is there. Here name is Babett. The people in the village are very conservative and very religious, they do not believe in procreation because it involves the pleasure of sex. That is just an example of how they live. They also live in primitive cabins, and eat the same cream of wheat-like food every meal every day. They abstain from all alcohol, and do not talk about their lives or struggles. Though they think they are living in righteousness, these people have created a dangerous, nuclear microcosm of a society. When Babett comes into town, she serves them over the decades and shows them a new kind of life they had never seen. I wonder what our society would look like if we all learned to love and serve like the example of Babett, and if a new kind of life would be introduced.