Food Movies

Bradley Cooper's Burnt, Helen Mirren's The Hundred-Foot Journey, Ratatouille, Adam Sandler's Spanglish (this one is mostly about the chef's personal life), Meryl Streep's Julie & Julia, Katherine Zeta-Jones' No Reservations, Tony Shalhoub's Big Night, the Asian movie Eat, Drink, Man, Woman or the American version with an all Hispanic cast Tortilla Soup (exactly the same plot), Johnny Depp's Chocolate, or one of my favorites Like Water for Chocolate (a Mexican Romance), no matter which of these you find tempting, these all represent strong food and culture influence.

As with many professions, such as police or doctors, the chef life and sometimes the production of foods can be high drama and perfect meat for feature films and television series. Lots of character development involve chef characters, Two Broke Girls the main characters open a cupcake business after a stint in culinary school, Micheal Ealy plays a chef in his upward cling within the industry in two movies Think Like a Man and Think Like a Man Too. Naturally, not all representations center around the food or the hard work of the chef, most of time the chef persona is merely a framework to build in the drama in the character's life. There have been some television series about chefs, and I don't mean the reality show cooking or baking competitions, but those are for another discussion.

Since food is a universal human experience and pursuit, its naturally a story that everyone can relate to no matter what language the story is told. You can change the city and the race of the actors, and the story will still hold up and be understood.

The story told by both the movie version or its inspired television series Soul Food communicates the saga of one African American extended family woven together by means of the tradition of Sunday dinner. No matter the challenges they face as individuals and individual households, they all come together through the bonds forged with the matriarchal teachings of a loving elder.

Sharing a tradition centered around shared food or having a peek into the cultures around food can lead an audience into interesting revelations and insights to cultural norms. Food procurement is in fact the root of civilization. Every group of people, tribes at the beginning, changed from foraging and hunting for food, being nomadic and following their hunted herds, to learning agriculture techniques that tied their lives to a particular geographical region. Once agriculture stabilized the lives of the tribes, the beginnings of barter and trade sprang out of a need to diversify available dietary resources. From trade came economies and money, tribes become villagers, and civilizations are formed. Therefore, food is the heart of all cultures and traditions, and much like mathematics, it speaks a universally understood language. The only movie that I have listed that I have yet to see is Burnt. Hopefully I will soon, and perhaps I will review it here.

No matter how strongly the movie or series tale is dependent upon food to communicate, few cinematic offerings are completely devoid of food scenes. Romances and romantic Comedies all have the ubiquitous date scene in a restaurant or at home dinner for two. Tons of family dramas come around the dinner table for holiday feasts and even some racy offerings, like 9 1/2 Weeks, have some food play scenes.

No matter what type of storytelling you like, you will be hard pressed to find one totally without a mentioning of food. Life is not sustainable with out food, the pursuit of food and the elevation of food to artistic levels is what chefs stride to accomplish.