FREE ESSAY ON BABETTE'S FEAST

BABETTE'S FEAST

Response Paper
ENWR110 
Mickey Woo
10/18/00
Babette??s Feast
The first part of the film describes how Babette settles into this small town. But the
main story builds twelve years after her arrival. Babette receives notification from
France that she has won the lottery, ten thousand francs. With her winnings she resolves
to help two sisters, Martina and Phillipa, and the congregation celebrate the 100th
anniversary of the birth of the late pastor by preparing a feast, not just any feast, a
real French feast. But in seeing the elaborate preparations for the meal, the sisters
grow alarmed and fear the strange food by the Catholic Babetter. Also, the members of the
congregation all resolve to say nothing about the food placed before them, except General
Loewenhielm, Martina??s old suitor, who returned after 30 years of army career. Yet as
the meal progresses, the pleasures these pious people have never even imagined begin to
entice them in spite of themselves. Loewenhielm praise the food, and he interprets to the
assembly the unique magnificence of the grand dinner. In the end Babetter??s feast has
its way even with old people. The final scene takes place inside, in the wreck of a
kitchen piled high with unwashed dishes, greasy pots, and empty bottles. The two sisters
tell Babette how great the meal was, and they will remember this evening after she has
gone back to Paris. But Babetter tells them that she is not going to go back to Paris,
because it is too expensive. She tells them that she had spent all of her winnings on
preparing for the feast. Then, she reveals her identity to sisters that she was a
renowned chef in Paris. Further, this most applauded chef has used her entire lottery
prize. Her five-star feast, prepared for people who didn??t trust her and who were
determined not to enjoy it, had cost her everything she had won to give this obscure
village a banquet they did not want, and in the process to bring about a reconciliation
and joy they could have experienced in no other way. 
The movie closes with the general??s speech that though we have been told that grace is
in the universe, humans?? foolishness and shortsightedness divine grace to be finite.
??But the moment comes when our eyes are opened and we see and realize that grace is
infinite, Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we await it with confidence
and acknowledge it in gratitude.??