They’ve been trying to pass it off as a children’s movie, but don’t let that fool
you. Ratatouille is a parable of the human condition more complete than any of
the anecdotes of misery and loss you’ll find on the Booker shortlist. It may not
be haunting and plangent, but it manages a better trick: it’s true.
A mass market doesn’t have to dumb down; it can produce, as here, a special
kind of refinement: the product that works for everyone. In a mega-blockbuster,
when things go right, the studios show us a collective dream of the species, the
one story that can touch us in our tens or hundreds of millions. That’s no
exaggeration: somewhere between 7 and 8 million individuals saw this film on its
opening weekend in the US alone, and the story is engineered for a far wider
appeal. It is appropriate that Ratatouille should be set in Paris, rather than inside
the States, for this is no piece of McWorld imperialism, it is the world’s story sold
back to it as inspiration: a tale of migration, its challenge and its hope.
Ratatouille is a celebration of the peasant’s power to remake himself into a hero.
It is a staggering message, only possible in the art of a commercial society. No
court painter would ever have elevated the culturally despised in this manner.
Unbelievably, the rat has become the main character. The mantra echoing
throughout, somewhat too plonkingly, is, ‘Anyone (with the necessary courage)
can cook’. It is the cry of a work built to serve the masses, and not to flatter a
few gentles.
When we see this work as ‘only’ a Pixar product, we close our eyes to the
possibility that it might be fiercely original, a true production. Yet to film a heroic
rat is remarkable. Goebbels made the Jews into rats in Der Ewige Jude as prelude
to mass extermination. Saner voices since have emphasised that the poor and
marginalised are not to be confused with rats at all: drug dealers may be
portrayed as rats, and perhaps also terrorists; never the poor. Ratatouille goes
much deeper: it says, in the voice of the poor, “we’re here, we are rats, and we
can still be heroes”. That is a shocking thought. There are scenes in this movie
which had my disgust muscles twitching: a rat colony discovered in a ceiling
cavity; a kitchen manned by dozens of rats. Ratatouille forces us to confront our
disquiet, and acknowledge our equals in the gutter. It is cognitively arresting: an
innovation that in a Turner Prize entry would have critics in ecstasies and the
Daily Mail climbing the curtains.
Who are the rats in this cartoon allegory, perhaps the finest since John Halas and
Joy Batchelor’s CIA-funded Animal Farm back in 1954? Here, Pixar truly
distinguishes itself: the rats are presented as rural migrants to the big city. The
film begins with the colony infesting a country cottage before they are thrown
out and chased through a sewer to the heart of Paris. Rats are, of course, old
companions in the cities, traditional symbol of the social underbelly. But Pixar
shows its originality by making the rats newcomers, and from a rural district.
The choice is inspired: the journey to the city from the country is the great
human story of our age. In 1910, perhaps 14% of humankind lived in cities. This
year, for the first time, the figure has topped 50%. The rate of growth is
unbelievable. China gained more urban-dwellers in the 1980s that all of Europe
(including Russia) gained throughout the entire nineteenth century. Cities in
Africa have grown in size since 1950 by some 4000%. Pixar has chosen to
dramatise the greatest individual challenge facing humankind: how to adapt to
our new, urban environment without losing ourselves in the process.
It is easy to sneer at cartoons, but watching the rat protagonist Rémy struggle
with his brother Émile and his father Django is to observe a beautifully crafted,
economical delineament of the tension between urban and rural values. Rémy
grasps the urban requirement that an individual must pursue his own destiny; his
relatives remind him of the rival claims of family and tradition. As Rémy fights to
establish an identity outside of his duties to the colony, or to balance his sense
of responsibility to his brother with the requirement to be loyal to the kitchen
where he works, we come to understand exactly how difficult this transition is,
and how irresistible it remains.
Ratatouille is not a perfect film: some of the early kitchen sequences appear to
exist only to show off the (admittedly astonishing) graphical achievements; the
main premise comes over as rather contrived, perhaps because it has so much
allegorical weight to carry; the essential message of hope and universal dignity is
spooned over everything with an outsized ladle. Yet the film works. It works
because it is true. Pixar achieves what a more self-consciously serious artist
would cut off both ears to approach: pinpointing the great dilemma of our time;
enacting its conflicts with delicacy and skill; affirming a message of hope without
resorting to easy consolation.
Pixar has made us all a new fable. Aesop’s Town Mouse and Country Mouse
taught, you may remember, that the mouse who ran back to the country was
wise, for the food would be worse, but life was far safer. ‘Better beans and bacon
in peace than cakes and ale in fear.’ Nonsense, says Pixar. The city is the place
for a wise rodent, despite its inevitable emotional ransom.
In this, Ratatouille speaks in an American accent, but it is the very best of
America’s message to the world: the message of infinite human possibility. Rémy
is allowed to share a vision that looks relentlessly upward to new tastes, new
possibilities and new ways of living. For a world that cannot stick to the old
recipes, Ratatouille mixes up its blend of courage, hope and humane
observation. It’s well worth a taste.
© lizardmagazine.com, 2007
you. Ratatouille is a parable of the human condition more complete than any of
the anecdotes of misery and loss you’ll find on the Booker shortlist. It may not
be haunting and plangent, but it manages a better trick: it’s true.
A mass market doesn’t have to dumb down; it can produce, as here, a special
kind of refinement: the product that works for everyone. In a mega-blockbuster,
when things go right, the studios show us a collective dream of the species, the
one story that can touch us in our tens or hundreds of millions. That’s no
exaggeration: somewhere between 7 and 8 million individuals saw this film on its
opening weekend in the US alone, and the story is engineered for a far wider
appeal. It is appropriate that Ratatouille should be set in Paris, rather than inside
the States, for this is no piece of McWorld imperialism, it is the world’s story sold
back to it as inspiration: a tale of migration, its challenge and its hope.
Ratatouille is a celebration of the peasant’s power to remake himself into a hero.
It is a staggering message, only possible in the art of a commercial society. No
court painter would ever have elevated the culturally despised in this manner.
Unbelievably, the rat has become the main character. The mantra echoing
throughout, somewhat too plonkingly, is, ‘Anyone (with the necessary courage)
can cook’. It is the cry of a work built to serve the masses, and not to flatter a
few gentles.
When we see this work as ‘only’ a Pixar product, we close our eyes to the
possibility that it might be fiercely original, a true production. Yet to film a heroic
rat is remarkable. Goebbels made the Jews into rats in Der Ewige Jude as prelude
to mass extermination. Saner voices since have emphasised that the poor and
marginalised are not to be confused with rats at all: drug dealers may be
portrayed as rats, and perhaps also terrorists; never the poor. Ratatouille goes
much deeper: it says, in the voice of the poor, “we’re here, we are rats, and we
can still be heroes”. That is a shocking thought. There are scenes in this movie
which had my disgust muscles twitching: a rat colony discovered in a ceiling
cavity; a kitchen manned by dozens of rats. Ratatouille forces us to confront our
disquiet, and acknowledge our equals in the gutter. It is cognitively arresting: an
innovation that in a Turner Prize entry would have critics in ecstasies and the
Daily Mail climbing the curtains.
Who are the rats in this cartoon allegory, perhaps the finest since John Halas and
Joy Batchelor’s CIA-funded Animal Farm back in 1954? Here, Pixar truly
distinguishes itself: the rats are presented as rural migrants to the big city. The
film begins with the colony infesting a country cottage before they are thrown
out and chased through a sewer to the heart of Paris. Rats are, of course, old
companions in the cities, traditional symbol of the social underbelly. But Pixar
shows its originality by making the rats newcomers, and from a rural district.
The choice is inspired: the journey to the city from the country is the great
human story of our age. In 1910, perhaps 14% of humankind lived in cities. This
year, for the first time, the figure has topped 50%. The rate of growth is
unbelievable. China gained more urban-dwellers in the 1980s that all of Europe
(including Russia) gained throughout the entire nineteenth century. Cities in
Africa have grown in size since 1950 by some 4000%. Pixar has chosen to
dramatise the greatest individual challenge facing humankind: how to adapt to
our new, urban environment without losing ourselves in the process.
It is easy to sneer at cartoons, but watching the rat protagonist Rémy struggle
with his brother Émile and his father Django is to observe a beautifully crafted,
economical delineament of the tension between urban and rural values. Rémy
grasps the urban requirement that an individual must pursue his own destiny; his
relatives remind him of the rival claims of family and tradition. As Rémy fights to
establish an identity outside of his duties to the colony, or to balance his sense
of responsibility to his brother with the requirement to be loyal to the kitchen
where he works, we come to understand exactly how difficult this transition is,
and how irresistible it remains.
Ratatouille is not a perfect film: some of the early kitchen sequences appear to
exist only to show off the (admittedly astonishing) graphical achievements; the
main premise comes over as rather contrived, perhaps because it has so much
allegorical weight to carry; the essential message of hope and universal dignity is
spooned over everything with an outsized ladle. Yet the film works. It works
because it is true. Pixar achieves what a more self-consciously serious artist
would cut off both ears to approach: pinpointing the great dilemma of our time;
enacting its conflicts with delicacy and skill; affirming a message of hope without
resorting to easy consolation.
Pixar has made us all a new fable. Aesop’s Town Mouse and Country Mouse
taught, you may remember, that the mouse who ran back to the country was
wise, for the food would be worse, but life was far safer. ‘Better beans and bacon
in peace than cakes and ale in fear.’ Nonsense, says Pixar. The city is the place
for a wise rodent, despite its inevitable emotional ransom.
In this, Ratatouille speaks in an American accent, but it is the very best of
America’s message to the world: the message of infinite human possibility. Rémy
is allowed to share a vision that looks relentlessly upward to new tastes, new
possibilities and new ways of living. For a world that cannot stick to the old
recipes, Ratatouille mixes up its blend of courage, hope and humane
observation. It’s well worth a taste.
© lizardmagazine.com, 2007
Want to know the meaning of life? Go see Ratatouille
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
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| Marc Sidwell is not joking |
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