Babette's Feast (BFI Film Classics)

Babette's Feast (BFI Film Classics) by Julian Baggini is another strong volume in this wonderful series. Depending on your history with the film you may come away with a completely new perspective or at least a more nuanced one.The first time I saw this film was simply as a film goer, in a small theater. The second time was in a film studies class where we were more concerned with filmmaking than film meaning, though the two are not completely separate. The third time was in a film and philosophy course where our guest speaker was another professor who also happened to be a Lutheran pastor. So this particular book brought all of these ways of viewing and understanding the film into one coherent work. I would have liked to have had more of Kierkegaard used but that is mainly because of personal preference. Baggini cites him often and many of the arguments are derived from Kierkegaard, so he is there. My preference is because of my work on Kierkegaard and Walker Percy's novels.In the sections (mostly at the beginning and the end) where Baggini wants to view this film as "doing" philosophy or "being" a philosophical text versus illustrating or illuminating other philosophical thinking, I thought of the book Foucault at the Movies which was released a couple of years ago. There are a couple of excellent essays that address Foucault's interest primarily in films that he perceives as doing philosophy rather than simply being philosophical in nature. Foucault and the essayists there use, I think, a narrower idea of what a philosophical text is than what Baggini invokes here. While Baggini makes a strong case that this is more than just a film that references ideas, I don't believe it reaches the level of an actual original philosophical text. That doesn't take away from either the argument here or the film, just a matter of how narrowly or broadly one defines "doing" philosophy.Probably the area where Baggini falls flat is where he presumes to speak for atheists and tell us what we think and how we think it. The level of arrogance there, coupled with blatantly ignorant claims, detracts from what was otherwise a wonderful interpretation and explication. But he has his beliefs and part of that is his belief, apparently, that he can tell the rest of us where our thinking is and where it falls short. As he is well aware, this is a strawman argument and a very weak way to try to make a point when you have none. Not just some, but for all of us. Yeah, not gonna happen. It just shows how flawed even the most attentive minds can be when they work in their blind spots.I highly recommend this and think that it will offer wonderful insights into the film regardless of how you currently understand the film.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

I bought this to be a companion with a book I already own. Guess I didn't look at all the fine print, and when it arrived I was disappointed to have another washed out paperback with fuzzy photos. I'll keep it anyway because I had to wait on it for along time and it was fairly cheap. That why I gave it 2 stars.

Babette's Feast by Julian Baggini is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in late June.A film of an ironic dinner for two very pious sisters whose lives are dotted with missed opportunities. In turn, they share the dinner with their community, redirecting the focus out wider unto an ensemble, whom which they can lose themselves in the dinner’s richness of flavor and pleasure. Very philosophical and never once went behind the scenes; what a feat!

"Babette's Feast" is a personal favorite, in my "Top Ten." And I generally enjoy the BFI books, so even pre-ordered this, months in advance of publication. Be warned - this is NOT a monograph about Gabriel Axel's film, indeed the filmmakers are barely even mentioned! It instead is a monograph about what the film "means." And, I suppose, what Karen Blixen's story "means." It reminded me of sitting in a mandatory college philosophy class lecture, listening to a dry-as-dust professor droning on about the meaning of life, along with meaningless tributaries about this or that school of philosophy/organized religion. The book is 83 pages long. At page 45, I tossed it.