Putting virtue and faith on the treadmill of time, Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast (1987) offers some fine taste in Danish faith-based dramas. With a female-led cast, the movie makes a case for reassessing women power in the 19th-Century Europe.
The story, set in a small Danish village, has three main characters: two sisters named Filippa and Martine (played by Bodil Kjer and Birgitte Federspiel respectively) who chose to remain single so they could help their father – the community’s pastor – with his service, and a young woman named Babbette (Stéphane Audran), a refugee from France who comes to stay with the aging sisters. On the hundredth birthday of their late father, the sisters accept Babbette’s offer of preparing them a congregational dinner.
Babette’s Feast is notably lacking in external conflict. The characters don’t really fight or get hostile, excluding the exchange of light-hearted verbal jabs between some supporting cast. The story exudes patience, positivity, and tolerance in all major characters. Selflessness and care for the needs and feelings of others are illustrated in their personal stories. The dramatic tension is sewn in the internal conflict of the three female leads, each a victim of self-sacrifice in some important way.
The movie’s climax is masterfully achieved in the thematic sequence of Babbette making dinner for the congregation with attention to every little detail. It is revealed only at the ending, following the climax, why this feast was so important to Babbette while the two sisters wonder at her excessive generosity to the point that she spends a fortune on it while at the same time they restrain themselves from calling it a luxurious indulgence, which is considered a sin in their faith.
Babette’s Feast is realistic and well-filmed with great sound, extraordinary moments of silence that reveal the internal conflict of the characters, and some touching music of Christian faith. If you can understand Danish, you’ll likely enjoy it more. But even with English subtitles, it impresses with its soulful presentation.
