What is Best in Life?
The characters in Babette’s Feast wrestle with that question, living as they do in a small coastal Denmark town. You may have experienced such a place, where the options are limited, yet a small-town charm persists: perhaps a simple life is best. (The cinematography captures the rustic beauty rather well).
Indeed, outsiders in the movie seem drawn to the Danish town: first a cavalry officer, Lorens Löwenhielm and then an opera star, Achille Papin. In town, each discovers one of the local pastor’s daughters and is ultimately rebuffed by the pastor and his children, Phillipa and Martine. As the pastor puts it: “In this calling of mine, my two daughters are my right and left hands. Would you deprive me of them?”
Inhospitable
The daughters are cordial, perhaps, but do not welcome the romantic attentions of outsiders. Rather, the daughters remain singularly faithful to their father’s church and the small community, turning down prestige as the wife of a rising star in the opera or cavalry, respectively.
Because of this refusal, Achille and Lorens throw themselves into their careers with abandon. Meanwhile, the pastor grows old and dies, leaving his flock behind to gather each year in remembrance of him and his teachings (his devotional writings on Christianity are apparently fashionable even beyond his small town). The daughters do their best to maintain the status quo at church and this annual gathering, but it is not to be. In-fighting and bitterness creeps into their fellowship over the years, subtle at first.
Also, Babette arrives: a refugee whose family was killed during political upheaval in Paris, and she comes bearing a letter from Achille Papin, commending her to the woman he once loved.
Papin also confesses that his opera career was less fulfilling, as the public that once loved him has now forgotten him. Phillipa has chosen what is best and will delight the angels in paradise with her talent.
The two sisters do not know what to do with Babette and tell this stranger that they have little money and cannot pay her. But, as the years pass, they come to rely on Babette and her housekeeping and cooking.
A Feast
Finally, Babette tires of the in-fighting among the pastor’s followers and takes it upon herself to throw such a feast in memory of the pastor that they will change their attitude. She is going to cook a real French dinner.
The sisters are horrified and worry that the feast will be too decadent and foment dissent among the parishioners: no one will enjoy the meal but focus only on the memory of the pastor.
Lorens, who joins the party at the last minute, is not in on this agreement, and creates a counterpoint to their joyless austerity. I won’t spoil the ending, but it does challenge me to be more hospitable and receptive to hospitality.
Letting in the Stranger
Watching this film, I could not help but think of how precisely the “inconvenient” or “unexpected” events and people that enter my life are the catalysts for growth in life, rather than something to be shunned.
I also could not help but think of Matthew 25:35. This verse contains the virtue Jesus praises as he welcomes people into their eternal reward: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Dare we do less than this in our own lives?
When Babette first arrived as a refugee, she had no material goods, and little apparent about her to recommend her, save the letter stating her need. And yet, her need was enough to move the sisters to action and hospitality, in advance of knowing Babette had anything to offer them. And, later, when Babette does have something to offer, the sisters fear that as well.
I found this relatable. How little and infrequently am I moved to generosity or hospitality toward those I know, let alone toward strangers. Perhaps it is cultural, but it doesn’t make it correct. I open my life and home for birthdays, holidays, and occasional hang-outs, but little else. And, if a stranger came knocking, I am not sure I’d answer, let alone welcome them into my life, let alone my home. I also struggle to receive hospitality.
There is no guarantee that I will be safe, and almost certainly will not remain unchanged by the act of welcoming others or being welcomed. But the film very nearly closes with a provocative response to this calculating way of living. Watch it for yourself, and see if Babette’s Feast does not likewise challenge you:
“Man, in his weakness and shortsightedness believes he must make choices in this life. He trembles at the risks he takes. We do know fear. But no. Our choice is of no importance. There comes a time when our eyes are opened and we come to realize that mercy is infinite. We need only await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude. Mercy imposes no conditions. And lo! Everything we have chosen has been granted to us. And everything we rejected has also been granted. Yes, we even get back what we rejected.”
Mercy frees us to take risks, because we are not drawing on our own finite resources; perhaps considering this, hospitality becomes easier to fathom. Perhaps we can envision everything as a vehicle for us to extend and receive mercy: the best thing in life.
To read more on our hospitality series, continue here.
