My Affinity for Dining Scenes in Film

There are several aspects of film I delight in, one of which being when directors include dining scenes. And not all are created equal as audio, visuals and symbolic undertones all play a part in whether I consider them an elevated and experiential addition or just an afterthought of the screenwriter. These dining scenes can be found in books or film but I’m going to focus on film today.

One of my first memories of enjoying food in storying-telling was when my Grandmother would read the children’s book Pinocchio to me as a child. From what I remember, Geppetto is carrying a brown sack of groceries, the illustration depicted lettuce, carrots and other produce just visible over the rim of the bag and the words she read (and how she read them, or better, how my five-year-old ears heard them) brought everything to life for me as a young child.

Then there’s The Boxcar Children cooking some sort of stew in the wilderness; the siblings in A Wrinkle In Time always eating liverwurst sandwiches with cream cheese and jam; the finger foods and other prepared sandwiches in Donna Tartt’s A Secret History….I could go on and on. I love food scenes in stories. Dining denotes community, togetherness and creativity in preparation. It immerses me into the characters’ world and if thoughtfully executed, can be used metaphorically in film revealing layers of meaning and understanding. I simply love when directors make a statement with dining.

I might add here that the whole experience for the viewer is what I find important as well as placement within the story arc. In the case of the film All Is Lost, it is mainly the placement that I find emotionally relevant, whereas in Godland many aspects of the dining experience are incorporated including relevant placement, audio, symbolic importance and visual cues.

Now let’s get dining, shall we?

‘Godland’ (2022)

This gorgeous and haunting film was shot on location in Iceland using 35mm film. The banquet of sounds is a symphony to my ears. I love when filmmakers incorporate audio as another layer of storytelling, such as the sound of the horses teeth chomping down on their bits, the sound of hooves clopping along the rugged wilderness paths and of course, the clinking of dishes and silverware and gulps of coffee while leaning over steaming stews. It’s a stark contrast to the cold winter lurking just outside, one that can be felt and understood by the viewer. There are moments I relish in this film, hellish moments that are simply nature taking its course and when taken alone mean nothing more than the act, but when combined with the underlying dark river of the human psyche, become altogether terrifying.

The Priest And His Selfish Breakfast

In Godland’s opening scene the head priest takes his breakfast in front of the younger missionary, Lucas, who he is preparing to send off to Iceland on a brutal quest in winter to establish a church. The head minister is sumptuously consuming his delicacies from a spread of hard boiled eggs, buttered bread, a bowl of fruit and what seems to be lukewarm coffee, as there is no notable steam rising. There are mugs and other goblets and linens spread across the table all in service to the head priest.

The younger missionary priest, however, neither partakes nor is invited to partake in the rather lukewarm, suspiciously humble feast of his elder mentor and instead watches and listens to his master explain how deprived he will soon be in the backcountry of Iceland’s unforgiving terrain. It is altogether profoundly foreshadowing, having what he might want and need metaphorically right in front of him, but unable to enter into it and satiate his soul…very much symbolic of an empty stomach.

I could do a whole blog post on this film alone but I’m not sure I can do it justice. The director is brilliant, having scenes unfold on screen and you don’t know what you’re looking at – is it small, or enormous? A person, or dirt? I found myself pulled into the mud, into the echos, the water, the cold, the dark undertow of this narrative. It’s a pity the most brilliant movies seem to get overlooked by mainstream.

The movie is also a folk musical – the only kind of musical to which I’m happy to subject myself. There’s less dialog than most movies might contain and I love that. The folk songs, sung by the party’s Icelandic guide Ragnar, seem more like dark incantations than bubbly outbursts of a carefree heart.

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell this story,”….as the camera pans across a lush green mountainous waterfall, Ragnar discloses to the group, in his Icelandic tongue, a sinister tale as they huddle around a fire roasting their meat. This movie is treacherous, just ordinary people, yet so creepy and hauntingly wrong – or is that just how nature unfolds without God? As if you’re witnessing on screen the madness within all of mankind when not checked by God. I kept waiting for someone to open the windows so that God might shine in and illuminate the darkness, but no one lifted a finger to do so.

A Second, Warmer Dining Scene

At around the intermission we get another dinner scene. This time the priest Lucas is ragged, unable to pay attention and hardly eats at all (yet again deprived, though satiety is within reach) while those around him gulp down wine, slurp freshly caught oysters, hot soup, and crunchy buttered bread all rather merrily. The table is more alive than the head priest’s lukewarm, uninviting table at the onset of his quest. Here there’s roasted meat, shared goodwill with smiles, wine and warmth.

Our dear protagonist Lucas is inconsolable, his inner world untouchable, rigid and perplexed.

‘All Is Lost’

This film has a short but almost spiritual scene of the sailor played by Robert Redford, eating a meal in the cabin of his sailboat. After an accident that leaves a huge gaping hole in his boat, he’s left cleaning up the mess and repairing it for the next two days. It’s hot, there’s sea water up to his knees in the cabin and he has to sleep in a hammock while the watery chaos shifts beneath him with the waves of the sea.

Up until this one dining scene he’s eaten only out of cans, pork and beans perhaps. He can’t use the oven to warm his meals because it’s still underwater. After several days of continually using the bilge pump, patching the side of the vessel, frying under the scorching sun struggling to order all the chaos, he does one last mopping up and finally his cabin is returned to normal.

He’s got one major problem though – no working electrical equipment to call out an S.O.S. There’s no hope of rescue. This dawning realization was difficult to swallow and he knew he’d have to either save himself or be lost at sea.

So out comes the whiskey, and one other thing he is capable of doing for himself – preparing a good hot meal which he’s been deprived of for days. What follows is a well placed scene of our skipper as he chops up veggies on the cutting board, the sizzling noises included in the audio as he sautés an onion. We hear the clinking of utensils, steam rising from the cooking pots, all a symbolic (though somber) dance of reward for a job well done. Order is restored.

While this cooking scene unfolds it starts to rain and he goes topside to wash off the crusty salt water that’s dried on his skin and face. The stress is being washed away, and he’s capping off all the hard work with a tomato and pasta sauce meal along with a good deal of whiskey. Them be sailors…

‘Conspiracy’ (2001)

Here the dining tables are elegantly dressed and nothing is held back in the preparation or presentation of the delicacies. Gourmet dishes served by butlers and an army of nervous chefs and servers to the Nazi generals, lawyers and administrators. These dishes, however elegant in presentation, come across as less than appetizing. They’re dressed limply on shiny silver platters, arranged in such a manner that exudes a lukewarm tinge to the eye, lifeless. I doubt I’d be partaking in these innocent, (is food innocent?) yet ravenous delicacies of death:

Do not eat the food of a begrudging host,
    do not crave his delicacies;
for he is the kind of person
    who is always thinking about the cost.
“Eat and drink,” he says to you,
    but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the little you have eaten
    and will have wasted your compliments.

~Proverbs 23.6-8

The poultry, ribs, seafood all hinting at a danger of…moral poison in their sweaty, grayish appearance. No deliciousness or sumptuousness to them. And many of the plates throughout the film are left uneaten, wasted – some members of the Nazi party even stating they did not eat at all. The wine flowed from every corner, the cigar smoke hung in the air but the ravenous souls of those in attendance were already drunk on a wrathful wine prescribed from a God they didn’t even believe in, much less fear.

‘Margin Call’

The last one I’ll mention in this post is Margin Call. The entire movie was suspenseful, intense and involved highly anxious interactions. It mostly took place throughout one night in the throes of statistical madness. After all the demonic financial numbers are grappled with, when Hell is served up for everyone else to deal with – indeed as the movie comes to the end of itself – the viewer is escorted to an upper floor of the high rise corporation that has a view of the New York skyline. We get to have dinner after a treacherous day on Wall Street selling mortgage-backed securities.

A quiet reprieve. Nestled over an elegantly draped table with fine linens, glassware and well prepared food is our antihero CEO relaxing, reading the newspaper and enjoying his dining moment after the massive storm he managed to evade…and indeed thrust upon the entirety of the world as we’d soon come to understand in 2008,

“Excuse me for eating but, it’s been a long day.”

We take a breath with him at this point in the movie. It’s a well placed dining scene in the aftermath of the carnage that is high stakes banking; an elite privilege after selling out the whole world to Satan…

…or perhaps ’tis Satan himself seated across from our weathered Sam Rogers, excusing himself to dine high above the chaos he’s just unleashed.

Afterthoughts

When I first began writing this a few weeks ago, I had no idea how difficult it would be. Who knew there was a journalistic language that film critics use when analyzing movies? I knew some reviews were better written than others but there really is a niche language concerning film dialog. The good thing is I’m not trying to be a film critic, the bad news is, I don’t have the means to make this as interesting as it could be. I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching all these films in order to create this list of dining scenes, and there are more I could have included.

Five weeks now that I’ve been on this thyroid pill and thank God, the brain fog and lack of energy is slowly subsiding. It’s annoying, I have to admit. I also bought an air purifier – God only knows all the invisible things we are subjected to without realizing it.

May you have a dining kind of week filled with warmth, good foods, and good vibes~