Movie Review
Ratatouille Directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava
Brad Bird’s latest project for Pixar tells of
a rat named Remy (Patton Oswalt) who
upon reading the cookbook of famous chef Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett) wants
to be a chef; Gusteau has since died of a broken heart thanks to a nasty putdown
by powerful food critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole, in an all-too-brief
performance), and appears to Remy as a floating spirit, repeatedly consoling him
with his favorite motto: "Anyone can cook!"
Remy makes his way to Gusteau’s restaurant where he meets Linguini (Lou
Romano), an awkward young man applying there for a job — any job, presumably as
janitor or better; Remy eventually finds his place in the restaurant under
Linguini’s toque, his paws tugging at Linguini’s scalp to control the hands
marionette-style (I wondered at this — are we supposed to take the hair-pulling
as some kind of mind control? Or dismiss the conceit with a Gallic shrug?), as
he creates the finest dishes in Paris.
Bird took over from an idea and characters first created by the Czech-born
British animator Jan Pinkava (who ended up with a co-directing credit); the
result is a fairly convincing rendition of the French culinary scene, thanks to
input by The French Laundry chef Thomas Keller (he designed the climactic
version of the eponymous dish, which is lovingly rendered down to the slightly
thickened juices dripping from the precisely sliced vegetables). As celebrity
chef Anthony Bourdain notes "The tiny details are astonishing: The faded burns
on the cooks’ wrists. The ’personal histories’ of the cooks." Putting aside the
fact that Bourdain gets a "thanks" in the end credits (for ’input early in the
film’) he’s not exaggerating, for the most part — the animated cooks handle
their animated knives correctly, with that curious rocking motion that’s so
efficient (and so much safer on the fingers), and toss their spices and
condiments in that show-offy, cavalier way professionals do.
Most impressive is Gusteau, who I suspect is an allusion to the rotund
Fernand Point, master of la grande cuisine, and "Father of Nouvelle Cuisine"
(Bourdain wrote about his parents once locking him in the car so that the two
could dine at Point’s fabled La Pyramide). Point never declared that "anyone can
cook," but he did serve anyone he liked regardless of their ability to pay, from
the richest nobility to the humblest laborer (though Point would rather close
down than serve Nazi officers). La Pyramide was set in the countryside, not the
middle of Paris, but his spirit lives on in some of the dishes served in the
movie (or rather, his spirit possibly lives in Keller, who helped design the
picture’s food).
A few cooking bits are off — the omelet Remy prepares for Linguini is way
overdone in my opinion, and I don’t think any self-respecting restaurant that
once held three Michelin stars would ever erect a storefront sign that vulgar,
bristling with that many light bulbs (they blink, too) on its rooftop (possibly
villainous chef Skinner [Ian Holm] had it added — but this is never made
clear). And Ego is far too rich to be a critic, at least one with some semblance
of integrity (there are those who are able to amass money, sure, but they
usually do so by having something going on on the side [a best-selling book, a
TV show]) — something that again isn’t made clear with Ego, who’s just a
filmmaker’s idea of a critic).
The picture also takes a few missteps storywise: I can’t believe Linguini
would be stupid enough to dismiss Remy for any act short of his friend actually
defecating in the food (spoiling the food, yes; stealing it — hell, no); the
boy should be smart enough to know on which side his bread is buttered, and I’d
sooner believe he’d cage Remy and force him to cook than ever allow the rodent
to leave. And cooks are eminently pragmatic creatures; when presented with the
claim that a rat is a culinary genius, I’d think it more believable that they’d
at least demand a quick demonstration before walking away (you can tell Bird [or
one or more of his four collaborators on the script] was taking shortcuts with
the story).
Overall, I’d say the picture is the best of Pixar’s recent features (their
sterile Cars [2006)] — a mechanical remake of the lugubrious Doc Hollywood
[1991] — isn’t even a serious contender), and Brad Bird easily the finest
director of animated commercial features working in the United States (though I
would consider his The Iron Giant — based on Ted Hughes’ 1968 children’s book
The Iron Man<.i> — to be his masterpiece).
Which, after all is said and done, isn’t really saying much. Ratatouille
isn’t a bad movie, but it’s far from a great one, and I’m mystified by all the
hosannas being heaped upon it. Scott in The New York Times considers it "one of
the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film" — what, in
the same league as Jacques Rivette’s La Belle noiseuse (1991); Robert Altman’s
Vincent and Theo (1990); Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980); Bob Fosse’s
Cabaret (1972); Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrey Rublyov (1969); Jean Luc Godard’s Les
Mepris (Contempt, 1963); Yasujiro Ozu’s Ukigusa (Floating Weeds, 1959); Guru
Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957), Jean Cocteau’s Orphee, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About
Eve, and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950); Powell and Pressburger’s The
Red Shoes (1948) to name just a few? Really?
Ratatouille is just the latest of many examples of what seems to be an
unshakeable operating principle since at least the ’70s — where American
animators spending uncountable millions on smooth character motion and perfect
lip synching to produce kiddie movies will on occasion sweat and strain to create
something that perhaps might appeal to adults, only to learn that it’s already
been done by some other country some years before, on a far smaller budget.
Bird and Pinkava, in choosing to depict the passion and artistry of French
cooking, take, in my opinion, the rather safer route; the French are certainly
unmatched for their knowledge and love of food, but I believe the Japanese are
nuttier in their enthusiasm, their willingness to try something — anything —
different. Combine this with Japan’s gargantuan animation industry, and we’re
not talking chopped liver here.
Animated chefs? Masami Anno’s TV show Chuka Ichiban (Cooking Master Boy,
1997), about a 13-year-old master chef named Liu Mao Tsing who has wide-ranging
adventures and competes in intense face-offs (the latter possibly inspired by
the TV series Ryori no mtetsujin [Iron Chef, 1993]), shows a wider, wilder range
of cooking than anything you see in Bird’s movie, with one foot in science
fiction (at one point a chef with a fantastically sharp knife slices into a
beluga sturgeon, pulls out the roe, presses the edges of the wound together, and
allows the fish to swim away whole and unharmed) and another in fantasy (every
time a dish is presented it glows with an unearthly light; every time a judge
tastes a dish he’s in ecstasy, transported to another world).
That said, there’s a passion for food and cooking technique in this series
that’s rock-solid real no matter what special effect or cooking device is
featured, the depiction of which sometimes approaches genuine complexity
(despite the admittedly crude animation).
In one of the better episodes Mao confronts Shouan, a former star pupil of
Mao’s mother Pai (one of the greatest chefs in China); Shouan left Pai to travel
the world and learn on his own, eventually joining the Underground Cooking
Society, a feared cooking society bent on domination and power. The competition
involved tofu (some of the most memorable contests involved the simplest of
ingredients), both its fermentation (which must happen overnight) and
incorporation into a dish; Mao’s tofu is sabotaged some time during the night,
forcing him to improvise a way to ferment, cook, slice up the tofu and create
his dish all in one box (you have to see it to believe it). Mao’s solution is
brilliant yet simple, his resulting dish a delight; Shouan’s dish is genius —
tofu pasta topped with a meat-like fried tofu and a tofu-based sauce.
"Stereosonic tofu," Shouan called it, because the tofu is presented three ways
in one dish, approaching the diner from all sides.
When the dishes are voted on, Mao wins out; one reason and the strongest
was that one of the judges had tasted Shouan’s dish before, from Pai’s
restaurant, no less. The loss is a bitter blow to Shouan — he’s wandered the
world for years in search of techniques that would go beyond that of his former
master, only to find that he’s at most run (in one breathtakingly animated shot)
the length and breadth of her palm. The episode tellingly and even poignantly
comments on the absolute hierarchy of creativity and talent (there’s good
talent, there’s great talent and then there’s talent so immense it’s inevitable,
practically inescapable), the need for roots and identity (you must know who you
are and what you’re capable of before you attempt to create something truly
original), the love-hate relationship between a master and her pupil.
Anton Ego’s sudden zooming back to the supper table of his childhood is
nicely done (though I could have done without the zoom), but compared to
Shouan’s realization of what his life has been up to this point Ego’s flashback
is mere child’s play.
Then there’s Mamoru Oshii’s Tachiguishi retsuden (Amazing Life of the Fast
Food Grifters, 2006), a jaw-droppingly dense and at times excruciatingly funny
meditation on Japanese fastfood lore, postwar Japanese history, and existential
philosophy. A group of con men (Moongaze Ginji; Foxy Croquette O-Gin; Beefbowl
Ushigoro; Hamburger Tetsu; Frankfurter Tatsu; Medium Hot Sabu [Tarantino can
only dream of inventing aliases as colorful]) visit various food stalls and
noodle shops and pull elaborate scams to get out of paying for the meal; the
characters are rendered as flattened, two-dimensional figures, as if they were
paper cutouts (Japan-based film critic Mark Schilling calls it kamashibai, or a
story told in a series of picture cards) suddenly granted the gift of life and
motion.
At one point a noodle shop owner declares "it’s only a bowl of noodles!"
Moonshine Ginji transfixes him with a glare and observes that it’s not only "a
bowl of noodles," it’s a bowl of noodles made from bogus (read: inferior)
ingredients — despite which Ginji, thanks to his powers of perception and
imagination, is able to devour the noodles at the peak of flavor, a moment
before they disappear forever.
The narrator (who speaks at an relentless pace, presumably because there’s
so much information to convey) declares that only words can bring back that
experience, and in such a way as to surpass the intensity of the original.
Now, if Bird (or any other lesser American talent) can evoke that kind of
transcendental culinary moment in an animated work, I’d be a happy (and hungry)
camper.
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