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Thursday, November 15, 2007
Ratatouille, continued
(x-posted to The Kugelmass Episodes)
(Bill’s original post on the film is here.)
I am melancholy to think of the moment in which this gorgeous, sunset-toned film appears. Every frame of it is washed in romantic pastels, an opulence that alone made it worthwhile to me. To the extent that the film has a point, it is a diatribe against criticism, except under particular circumstances that the film itself memorably defines—when the critic risks himself in defense of something new.
There are warm niches for the rats and human beings in this film to occupy; for example, the scene where the food critic, eating a spoonful of ratatouille, is carried back to his childhood, could very well be a statement about the air of homeliness and familiarity that is always as present as strangeness in great art. Looking ahead to I’m Not There, I am thinking of how the folksiness of Dylan’s music always complemented and deepened the hallucinatory carnival overfilling his lines. Ratatouille does not know quite what it is—consider the final scene, where the critic is living happily as an “investor” in the new restaurant. That investment is, quite literally, what critics do, and what everybody else does as well when it comes to art. They give to art the stuff of their lives: their time, their hopes, their conversations. Works of art spark friendships and kindle desires, all secondhand in conversations between people: awkward, ardent statements that ripen into criticism. Nonetheless I am sure that, just as Brad Bird thought it was profound to rate bad art higher than criticism, other people will think his movie profound for saying it. Some will interpret the scene where Ego eats ratatouille as the long-awaited victory of the merely personal, pastel tears and all. For my part, the scene of Ego’s salvation reminds me of sitting right outside of Blackstone’s, in a rain-weary corner of Oxford, reading a pink and orange volume of Proust. Proust is more than ninety years old; it took many voices, and much embittered and questionable pride in what is rare, to ensure that some of that endless, extravagant, nearly unreadable novel survived long enough to become an ingredient in Bird’s parable of the new.
Comments
Joseph,
It’s not clear to me that this is a true statement: “Brad Bird thought it was profound to rate bad art higher than criticism.”
Indeed, the film goes to some lengths to poke fun at bad, commercialized food, no? It’s true that Ego’s final column is an attack on criticism--but only that form that doesn’t, as you say, risk something of its own; pay attention or homage to the creator’s risk in making criticism’s objects.
Also: this is a film with riches far greater than a “diatribe” against critics. It’s about longing--and the sense that we don’t belong to those milieu to which we wish or strive to belong. And that sense of not belonging, or exclusion, is often painfully exterior to our actual worth or sense of self--while at the same time, because we all contain multitudes, can be as internally-driven as externally: our histories are, to an extent, inescapable. We do not overcome so much as integrate.
Joel,
Actually, I found the very quote I was looking for: ““But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.” That’s what I was paraphrasing.
Certainly the film makes fun of bad, commercialized food, but it acts as though overcoming such food is the work of the chef, and not the work of the critic. In actuality, it is the work of both.
Unfortunately, the risks an artist takes are meaningless, though they themselves may make a good story. Only the risks that the work take matter, and in plenty of cases a work is praised for its difficulty when in fact there is no sweetness ever to be gotten from it. This is perpetually the case with positive reviews of some obscure independent bands.
Also: this is a film with riches far greater than a “diatribe” against critics. It’s about longing--and the sense that we don’t belong to those milieu to which we wish or strive to belong. And that sense of not belonging, or exclusion, is often painfully exterior to our actual worth or sense of self--while at the same time, because we all contain multitudes, can be as internally-driven as externally: our histories are, to an extent, inescapable. We do not overcome so much as integrate.
There is a great deal to what you say, as it applies to humanity in general; at the same time, Ratatouille is not a particularly good representation of integration, nor of milieu. The rat is really the only artist of worth in the whole picture, other than Gusteau, so he has a milieu of one, and he gets that through an imaginative relationship with a book. The more you think about his relationship to humans, the more repugnant it gets, symbolically speaking: is he a peasant who deserves entry into the privileged classes? A member of separate ethnic or racial group who can’t assimilate too fast? While I don’t mind the little rat restaurant in the eaves, it’s not a vision of integration.
The comments from tomemos and Jonathan at my site have been good, and the discussion there touches on some of these same issues.
Criticism has to spring from love, not envy?
I think I’m slightly confused by the question. Criticism springs from the same things as art, though it favors logical exposition over holism, symbolism, and artifice; neither art nor its interpretations are reducible to either love or envy, and good work often comes from both.
I don’t know I can completely sign onto the idea that that art & crit spring from the same sources. I’d like to think so, on the basis of preferring simplicity in such things. Maybe the problem is with the metaphor “springs from”—as if there is some inner place that cultural stuff emerges from. But taking a more pragmatist tack, if one mode of expression “favors logical exposition over holism, symbolism, and artifice,” then they might be different kinds of things. So the question I asked may not make sense.
But really, do you think envy can lead to the production of good art or good crit? (I realize the question presumes a kind of Romantic—moralistic?—point of view of cultural production.)
from”—as if there is some inner place that cultural stuff emerges from
Actually, I believe that there is. It’s not so much that I’m unaware of how individuals are interpellated by their social and historical circumstances, as that I think the act of creating “cultural stuff” produces and reifies inwardness, even if that inwardness is also a site of intersecting external forces.
But really, do you think envy can lead to the production of good art or good crit?
Definitely. One way of talking about Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” is through talking about envy; in the biography of almost every writer, and most other artists, is the record of that desire (initially frustrated) to have what one’s idols already possess: canonical status, influence, even fame.
I like that idea of “refining inwardness,” Joseph. And I agree with you about envy, though unhappily, having come of age (literally & figuratively) during the Summer of Love. I’m just an old hippie.
Um, pardon me, but I thought the moral of the story of Ratatouille was to be found in that set-piece at the climax.
I am referring to the frenetic army of rats, bending down into the simmering pots in the kitchen, their tails all a-twitching.
Are we not supposed to take away from this that too many rats in one’s kitchen do *not* spoil the broth?
(-- gag!—)
http://www.michaelbarrier.com/
Walt Disney Pictures announced earlier this month that Ratatouille had grossed more than $600 million worldwide, making it the second highest-grossing Pixar release to date (the highest, not identified in the Disney press release, is presumably Finding Nemo). The domestic box office accounts for only a little more than one third of Ratatouille’s total. Ratatouille has been extraordinarily popular overseas, especially in France, where it is, according to Disney, the most popular film of the year, in all categories.
I’ve been surprised by the scale of Ratatouille’s success, but I think this Italian magazine cover (sent to me by my friend Patrick Garabedian, who recently returned from Italy) suggests why foreign audiences may have responded so warmly to the film. Despite the lamentable inroads made by fast food and supermarchés, people in countries like France, Italy, and Spain still take food more seriously, and prepare it better, than most Americans do. Ratatouille approaches cooking seriously—its restaurant kitchen looks real—in a way that Europeans have surely appreciated.