“…I'll make you a deal. You provide the food, I'll provide the perspective—which would go nicely with a bottle of Cheval Blanc 1947.”
-Anton Ego, Ratatouille (2007)
We’re going to be doing two food movies back-to-back. One is from my past and one is much more recent (hint for next post?).
In compiling this list, and explaining its existence, I wrote some about the role of a movie in crafting me as a person, and 2007’s Ratatouille, written by Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird and directed by Brad Bird, is such a movie. While it has been memed to hell, and while the premise remains as wonderfully ludicrous as ever (ha, rat chef), Ratatouille develops into a dialogue of art and ego, place and perspective, and the drive and will to create, and create in spite of the obstacles life puts in our way (or that we put in our own way).
It helps that Ratatouille is at once loads of fun and wonderfully deep. The movie leans hard into the absurdity of the premise and the endless ways the medium of animation works for creating flamboyant characters, physical comedy, and gorgeous setting and tone. Throughout, the viewer finds themselves charmed by lighting, intoxicated by food, and sucked into the miniature world beneath their feet. Remy (Patton Oswalt) as a driven, creative, perpetually threatened protagonist plays well against the sincere comedic haplessness of Linguine (Lou Romano) and the scheming darkness of Chef Skinner (Ian Holm).
As an aside, one of the most repeated lines when my brother and I watch or discuss the movie is Skinner’s ‘jump scare’ of, “Welcome to hell.”
Also, it’s about food. Wonderful food. Glorious food. Wait, that’s a different movie. But I honestly do think that was where Ratatouille first spoke to me. Hang around enough and hear the story of my life, and you know that food has always played and does still play an important part of it. The path which led me to becoming a sommelier begins with cooking dinner at home for my brother and parents—something which spawned a love not only of the act of cooking itself, but for all creative endeavors. Ratatouille speaks to this too, not only for its oft-repeated line of “Everyone can cook,” but also in how it explains through music, color, and narration what it means to be creative.
“There is excellence all around you—you need only be aware to stop and savor it.”
In its examination of creativity, Ratatouille also explores well the themes of arrogance and ego. Not for nothing is that actually the antagonist’s name, though the character of Ego has a relatively small amount of screentime, but one could make the case that the force of ego itself is the antagonist of the movie. It’s ego that limits one’s ability to enter the world of fine dining, and it’s ego which pushes Remy to betray Linguine. Ego appears in interspecies rivalries and judgement over cuisine and status. In some ways, the movie rolls on as a folly—Remy’s rise and fall and rebirth viewed through the lens of talent and ego. In doing so, Ratatouille warns against forgetting the reasons behind why we create in the first place and what role creation plays in the human (or rat) experience.
This plays out well enough in the critical climax of the movie, where its eponymous dish renders Ego speechless and allows him, after a lifetime of critique, to simply enjoy his meal. I think, at the end of the day, that’s the effect any creative—cook, writer, painter, singer—desires from their work. To see the effect it has, to know it connects, that the sympathetic drive that leads us to share our unique perspectives on the world is not in vain but is, in fact, appreciated and understood is an endlessly rewarding blessing. In Ratatouille, this is through food, but the message is told with enough clarity that the viewer understands its endless extrapolations.
“This is the way things are. You can’t change nature.”
“Change is nature, Dad. The part that we can influence—and it starts when we decide.”
“Where are you going?”
“With luck, forward.”
I think the final area in which Ratatouille so impacted me is the resolution of Remy’s own internal conflict—that of feeling like he has to pretend and disguise who he is. At his lowest moment, he has a conversation with his mental projection of his idol, Chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett), who has served as something like his conscience through the film, where he decries his inability to be himself and how he doesn’t need to be told who he is. Gusteau, for everything, agrees and says that Remy has not even needed to pretend. It’s a little on the nose, yes, but it’s a direct enough message that for someone like me, who has struggled at times for the sense of being trapped between numerous worlds, it is comforting and healing to hear spoken aloud (but get ready, there’s a later movie on this list that does it even better (and in space)).
All in all, Ratatouille is a wonderfully eloquent and heartfelt look at creativity and passion, identity and drive, all wrapped in a pleasingly aesthetic, funny, genuine, if somewhat unevenly paced, adventure (there’s a chase scene which seems weirdly out of place and a few slow patches which feel a bit lagging in an otherwise tight story). It speaks volumes about a love of food, of creation and art, and the conflicts involving identity, place, and purpose. All elements, from the vivacious nature of Brad Bird’s directing to the playful layers of Michael Giacchino’s score, to the endlessly entertaining voice acting (“I killed a man… with THIS THUMB!”) work to bring this humbly ludicrous story of a rat wanting to be a chef to its elegant, emotional, comforting peaks. It’s a movie I often put on in the background while doing other things—usually cooking—and which I can never recommend enough.