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BEVERLY LEVITTScreenwriters have long used meals to underscore movie messages. Just look at what's on the menu of some Oscar contenders.
- Source: Inspired by "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Recipe from Dr. Victor A.L. Gielisse, vice president culinary education, Culinary Institute of America.
When Tallulah Bankhead edged out Ingrid Bergman for a Golden Globe in 1944 for Lifeboat, but failed to even be nominated for the Academy Award, which Bergman won that year for Gaslight, the strong-willed Tallulah exclaimed, "The people who vote in that free-for-all don't know on which side their crepes Suzettes are buttered.'
Just as Bankhead used a food analogy to voice her disappointment, Hollywood screenwriters have used food to underscore messages in film since silent movies, when a starving Charlie Chaplin put his boot in a pot, boiled it and ate it in the 1925 classic, Gold Rush.
To the screenwriter, food, and particularly the dinner table, is used to intensify emotion, show quirks about characters and as a tool to advance the plot.
"Mom, dad and the kids gathered around the table, passing freshly baked rolls and mashed potatoes, signifies the traditional American family: safe, solid, secure," says Richard Friedenberg, who was nominated for his 1992 script of A River Runs Through It. "When the picture changes - someone is missing, someone is too upset to eat or someone goes storming off - the picture is shattered."
Although screenwriters know that one great food scene is worth a thousand words, it's not often that the heart and soul of a family is exposed as brilliantly as in the dinner table scene from In America, when a devastated, impoverished mom invites a sick neighbor to break barm brack bread and colcannon for the traditional Irish celebration of Halloween.
But it is a common occurrence that the best screenwriters choose the dinner table to bare it all in their Academy Award-winning films. For that scene alone, In America should win the Oscar for Best Food Scene, if there was such an honor.
If anybody ever needed to find lucky coins in his mashed potatoes, it's the AIDS-ridden artist Mateo (Djimon Hounsou), known to the Irish immigrant family upstairs as "the man who screams." Wanting her daughters to experience life in America, the mum, Sarah (Samantha Morton), sends her young daughters down the hall in their homemade costumes to trick-or-treat.
Mateo opens the door to Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger) clutching brown paper bags awaiting goodies, and his presumed scariness metamorphoses into sympathetic kindness, including an unexpected treat so sweet they're embarrassed to accept it. Watching the scene, Sarah is emboldened to invite him for Halloween dinner, especially when the girls report he had nothing in his fridge but medicine.
Shunned by his own family, Mateo feels the thrill of acceptance by this kind family with a tragedy of their own, and sitting at their dinner table looms large. He's so grateful to be there that each word, each movement, radiates his thankfulness. He's never seen colcannon and barmbrack bread, but hungrily takes a bite of each, groaning as he removes a piece of silver foil from his mouth and unwraps it to find a coin, then a ring.
Knowing nothing of the Irish tradition of putting coins and rings in Halloween food to grant good luck, Ariel is prompted to gush, "You're magic, you're winning everything. That means you're going to be rich."
Emotion and compassion permeate the air, the dinner table and each member of the family as we realize all their lives have been forever changed.
Also nominated for best food scene
In Lost in Translation, Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) not only share a penchant for hanging out at hotel bars in the middle of the night, they love taking meals together. That's because the table is the perfect setting to try making sense of their seemingly senseless marriages. The meals graduate into a discourse about mono no aware (a Japanese expression meaning having a certain sensitivity). So they dip their sushi into wasabe and soy sauce and mull the meaning of life.
They both feel healthier eating this fresh food. Bob tells his wife back home that he wants off pasta, and on Japanese.
As Charlotte and Bob gaze into each other's eyes, dreaming of yet another array of sushi, they are presented with a pot of hot water and a plate of raw meat and vegetables. After finishing the lunch to the best of her ability, Charlotte complains bitterly to Bob, "That was the worst lunch." He rolls his eyes, mumbling ironically, "What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?"
In The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the healthy appetites of the diminutive, fun-loving quartet of hobbits has us salivating. No matter where they are - scaling the heights of Mount Doom or saving Middle-earth - their biggest concern is food and, specifically, when will it be coming.
Pippin (Billy Boyd) won't start the journey without breakfast. Sam (Sean Astin) asks Frodo (Elijah Wood), "What about our second breakfast?" Merry (Dominic Monaghan) wants to know, "What's on the menu for elevensies?" Frodo asks, "What's for lunch?" Sam demands to know when they are stopping for afternoon tea? Who's doing dinner? And, did you say something about supper? Of the group, Sam is the most worried about missing meals; consequently, this kindly hobbit was in constant mortal combat with his bulge.
So we settle in, popcorn on laps, eager for a kaleidoscope of sumptuous food scenes. Alas, all we get are hunks, pieces and crumbs of Elvish lembas bread. Okay, so it's magically nutritious. And it'll fill a belly for days. And everyone in the world we know is trying to invent a recipe for it. Me, I was left fantasizing about a filet, a shank, a T-bone of something and maybe a tuber or two. But the only decent meal I witnessed had demonic bad guys replete with rotten teeth tearing apart gray flesh with their bare hands.
In Finding Nemo, where the characters are members of a species that often graces our dining table, it's refreshing that a group of sensitive, albeit disgruntled, sharks have taken up the cause against fin-based meals.
In an attempt to change their evil ways, a great white by the name of Bruce (who claims he's a nice shark, not an eating machine) and his closest friends attend meetings of Fish-Eaters Anonymous to remind each other that, "Fish are Friends, not Food! Except stinkin' dolphins who think they're so cute."
If you're still cavalier about chowing down on a sea creature, consider Marlin the clownfish (voiced by Albert Brooks). He's orangy-pink with pride over his purchase of a new home (a magnificent coral reef) in a good school district, until he loses his wife and several thousand fish eggs to a behaviorally challenged barracuda. Spotting his only surviving offspring, Marlin becomes the concerned single father of a handicapped son. You see, poor little Nemo (voice of Alexander Gould) was born with an undersized fin. Suffering the nickname "Shark Bait," the overprotected little fish overcompensates by letting go of dad's fin, swimming out too far and getting caught in the net of scuba divers. All's well that ends well in this comedic melodrama, but isn't this enough fodder to make you think twice about serving Sicilian Shark Stew for supper?
In the first scene of Girl With a Pearl Earring we watch the confident hand of the still teenage Griet, (again, Scarlett Johansson) joyfully peeling an onion, creatively carving carrots and cabbage, and then beautifully balancing a ruby red beet, a yellow Dutch potato and a purple turnip in a vegetable arrangement that truly rivals art. It's 1665 in Delft, Holland, but Griet's technique could rival any modern-day culinary student.
When Griet becomes a servant in the home of the revered artist, Johannes Vermeer, her diligence at grinding spices, seasoning turbot and arranging party trays of fish, fowl and vegetables into artistic innovations attracts his attention. Vermeer has yet to learn her practical side, but we see her challenging a butcher twice her age when he tries to slip her some elderly chops. One sniff and she hands them back. The girl doesn't settle for second best.
No wonder the brooding Vermeer trusts her to mix and mash tinctures and powders until the pigment blooms under her mortar and pestle into the brilliant colors he desires. Griet, confident in the kitchen and assertive in the artist's studio, has her face etched in memory for all time.
There's not a food-centric flick such as Babette's Feast, My Dinner With Andre or Big Night among this year's nominees, but even when the movies aren't about food, food still manages to playing an important role. And for that, there should be an Oscar.
- Beverly Levitt is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.
Colcannon
Drop potatoes into salted boiling water. Boil briskly until potatoes are tender.
In a separate pot, cook cabbage and kale until tender. Put potatoes through a sieve or ricer. Heat the cream. Beat in the butter and cream to make the mixture light and fluffy.
Cook the cabbage, kale and scallions in butter just to heat through; add to potato mixture.
Add salt and pepper to taste, beat well and reheat thoroughly.
A heaped portion is served on each plate.
Serves 4 to 6.
- Source: Inspired by "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Recipe from Dr. Victor A.L. Gielisse, vice president culinary education, Culinary Institute of America.
Sweet Potato Pie
Pastry crust:
Filling:
To make crust: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix flour with salt. Using your hands, combine butter and lard with flour until thoroughly mixed. Add enough cold water to make pastry hold together.
Place dough in refrigerator for 1/2 hour before rolling out. Sprinkle flour lightly on pastry board and roll pastry until it's as thin as paper. Work quickly. There will be enough dough for one 9-inch pie and a miniature.
Fit pastry into pan and refrigerate until ready to use.
To make filling: Boil potatoes until soft. While the potatoes are still hot, peel and mash fine through a sieve. Mash butter into the potatoes. Combine milk, orange juice and peel, salt and molasses or sugar. Taste, adding more sweetening if desired, and stir into potato mixture.
Beat egg yokes and whites separately. Add yolks to potato mixture, then fold in whites.
Beat filling with a whisk until smooth. It should be loose but not runny.
Pour filling into pie shell. Place pie shell on a baking sheet. Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Makes enough for 1 regular-sized pie and 1 miniature.
- Source: Inspired by "Cold Mountain" and adapted from "A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove" by Laura Schenone (W.W. Norton & Co., 2003).
Turbotin of Griet Met Prei en Gebakken Aardappels
(Fillets of Turbot With Stewed Leeks and Sauteed Potatoes)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place fillets on medium sheet pan. Brush with clarified butter and sprinkle with lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 3 to 5 minutes.
Remove, brush with additional butter and top fillets with bread crumbs. Place fish back into the oven to finish cooking. Crumbs should be evenly browned and the fish should be fork-flaky, opaque, yet still moist.
Serve with stewed leeks and sauteed potatoes.
Serves 6.
Gestoofd Prei (Stewed Leeks)
In a medium rondeau (round pan about 21/2 inches deep), heat clarified butter. Add garlic and onions, reduce heat and gently sweat until translucent (3/4 minute).
Add leeks and cook mixture gently for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add stock and continue cooking over low heat. Leeks should be tender. Before serving, add heated cream and reduce gently.
Adjust seasoning with parsley, salt, pepper and nutmeg.
Serves 6.
- Source: Inspired by "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Recipe from Dr. Victor A.L. Gielisse, vice president culinary education, Culinary Institute of America.
Gebakken Aardappels
(Sauteed Potatoes)
Wash potatoes. Boil in salted water until partially cooked. Drain potatoes and place on a sheet pan. Allow to cool briefly. Peel and slice potatoes into 1/2-inch pieces. In a saucepan, heat oil or clarified butter. Add potatoes and saute over medium heat until they begin to brown evenly. Add sliced onions; continue to saute until mixture is browned and tender.
Season with salt, fresh pepper and parsley, butter. Serves 6.
Source: Inspired by "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Recipe from Dr. Victor A.L. Gielisse, Culinary Institute of America.