Ratatouille
Movie · 2007 · Reviewed on
There’s a scene near the end of this film, when Ego tastes the Ratatouille for the first time. The dish was so powerful that it sends him back to the past, to when he was a child… And somehow brings that child back to the present. Ego is ecstatic, his face riddled with lines of joy. He frantically takes as many bites of the dish, sighing and exulting in the taste, his childhood overcoming the terrifying demeanor he possessed a few seconds ago.
I spend a lot of time thinking critically about the films I watch. It is an obsession I have that I do not shy away from. But in this obsession, came the fear that I might have lost the ability to enjoy good film. My standards gone too high for me to experience and enjoy film like me as a child would have.
Ratatouille, both the dish and the movie, shatters all of those beliefs by simply appealing to my heart.
Today, I was Anton Ego. I was thrown back to my childhood when I first watched this film, and this film is pure unadulterated joy created by a master hand.
This film is a conversation about art. The desire to create art, the necessity of art, the criticism of art and the experience art gives us.
Remy yearns to do what he is passionate about, his family questions why create when garbage is good enough, Ego and Claire helping with the reputation of the restaurant and Ego dropping his pen as he is transported through time by simply the sensation of taste. There’s a clear parallel to what art can do if we let it.
It is not a bad thing to have tastes. In fact it is important to develop a good sense of taste. Humanity cannot innovate if we didn’t always yearn for more. If we always said ‘good enough’.
It is safe to say that Ratatouille matches my tastes and exceeds it.
I will conclude with Ego’s final review of Gusteau’s because it can pass as my review of Ratatouille as well.
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.
