Last night provided me with the rare opportunity (in an age where repertory screenings have dwindled, especially outside major markets) to see a film I love in an actual theater. Columbia’s excellent local indie theater, in conjunction with a nearby church, have started a film series for the month of July centered around films about food. Things kicked off last night with the ne plus ultra of foodie films, Babette’s Feast, Gabriel Axel’s adaptation of a story by the Danish author Isak Dinesen.
I love this film. Its simple, straightforward story pairs well with Axel’s sparse aesthetic, giving the film the polished power of a parable (indeed, the potential logline opener “A father had two daughters” sounds suspiciously like one already). And though the film has been appreciated by people of all religious inclinations, and none at all, it does hold a special appeal for me, and many other Christian critics, precisely because it presents such a pure image of Christian love in action.
In an age where “Christian film” has carved out its own terrifying abyss of a niche, it feels refreshing to experience a film at once unafraid to sincerely present faith as a positive good, and one so utterly devoid of proselytizing. Christianity infuses the whole film, but in such a way that its presence never feels less than natural. In the climactic dinner party, where French maid Babette prepares a real French meal for her pious employers, two sisters of stern Lutheran heritage, and their shrinking congregation, there are obvious echoes of that most famous Biblical meal, the Last Supper, down to the twelve guests present.
But as a whole the film reminds me most of another incident in the life of Jesus, one that itself has the blunt suggestiveness of a parable. As Jesus visits a house, a woman pours perfume out on his feet. The disciples object on the grounds that something so expensive could have been sold, and the money given to the poor, but Jesus silences them. That work will always exist, he says, but in the moment, the excess passion the woman shows, her useless offering at his feet, is a thing of beauty (John’s gospel says that the smell of the perfume fills up the house, a stunning image).
Babette’s Feast captures the essence of that story, as Babette spends everything she has to create one fleeting meal of unfettered pleasure. Viewed from one angle, her actions are useless; the money she spends could easily go to some other, more fit purpose, either to help her home to France or to aid the sisters as they feed Jutland’s poor. Instead she lavishes it on a meal that disappears in the course of an hour. This is what I will call the uselessness of grace, the prodigality woven into creation itself. In The Supper of the Lamb (a book longtime devotees know acts as a foundation for this site), Robert Capon argues that the existence of the world itself depends on excess pleasure on the part of God:
“That, you know, is why the world exists at all. It remains outside the cosmic garbage can of nothingness, not because it is such a solemn necessity that nobody can get rid of it, but because it is the orange peel hung on God’s chandelier, the wishbone in His kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore it stays. The whole marvelous collection of stones, skins, feathers, and string exists because at least one lover has never quite taken His eye off it, because the Dominus vivificans has his delight with the sons of men.”
The human preparation of food presents the best example of the uselessness of grace. There is no need for humans to go beyond the barest effort to prepare our food; rather cooking, “wasteful” as it is, conveys something of the foolish pleasure of life. In Babette’s Feast this useless grace bubbles over to revive the parched faith of the congregation: long rifts get mended, estranged friends reconcile, and those waiting for death taste once more of life. Though the meal ends and the diners wander out under the midnight sky, something sacramental lingers, a change effected through something unasked for, unneeded.
***
Perhaps it’s no surprise that I cling to the importance of the useless, the superadded grace that makes life not just bearable, but worth living. As someone who has chosen to devote his life to the creative arts, broadly defined – my academic focus is literature, my extracurricular focus film, but I also love music and art and even that unrepentant sinner television – I suppose I need some justification for why I am not out building wells in Africa (beyond the obvious: I would be an abysmal engineer). I fully recognize that much of the world sees what I do as useless: it doesn’t generate money or jobs or political prestige, so it is useless to those in power; it’s not particularly altruistic, so advocates of justice might look down on it.
Forgive me if this sounds stupid, but I take a lot of solace in this, that the work I do – preserving and advocating for art in the public memory – may be considered useless. There’s a beauty in toiling away at something that has no immediately obvious survival advantage for mankind. Not that I am somehow superior to scientists who cure diseases or lawyers who defend the poor, but that I too have a part to play in human society, a part that contributes to keeping us human. Like Babette in her kitchen (though much less skillfully), I toil away to create a space for wonder and joy, however fleeting that may be.
These thoughts have been swirling in my head since last night for a very particular reason. About ten hours before I sat in the theater to watch the feast unfold, I received some crushing news: The Dissolve, hands down my favorite site for film criticism, has closed its doors. In the two years of its existence, the site has meant a lot to me. While for me, like many my age, the late great Roger Ebert served as a godfather, an initiator into the world of film, the writers at The Dissolve were more like my cool uncle or much older sibling, people I sought to learn from and emulate (as no one could hope to emulate Ebert).
More than just great critics and writers, the staff of The Dissolve always felt like real people, accessible and open. A few times early in the site’s existence, I dropped a line to Keith Phipps, the founder, with ideas for freelance pieces. Though he never accepted one (with good reason), he went above and beyond a standard rejection, offering me encouragement. That same tender care pervaded the site; though I never became a regular contributor to the tight knit community in the comments section, I loved visiting and reading the gracious, substantive conversations that happened there, often facilitated and encouraged by the staff themselves.
So it’s a blow to have it gone. First and foremost because a group of insanely talented writers must now find new jobs, though I feel confident that they will land on their feet (as bad as the current environment is for criticism, they of all people should make it out ok). But, selfishly, also because we cinephiles have been robbed of something precious, a site providing consistently excellent criticism in a landscape dominated by the cheap and easy.
This is the real scandal of The Dissolve’s demise, that everyone recognizes but no one knows how to fix. Whatever the particulars, the site surely struggled because, in bare economic terms, it was useless. It didn’t bow to the demands of the endless hype machine and devote 90% of its content to Marvel films. It refused to churn out list after list of rehashed nostalgia (when it did put out lists, they looked strange and thoughtful). In short, it didn’t “generate content” that “drove traffic”. It staked its survival on the superadded grace of thoughtful, nuanced exploration of film, a wager that did not in this case pay off.
And it stinks that it didn’t. It cuts deep that we as a society were unable to value The Dissolve as it deserved, an inability that has spread its pernicious tentacles into all areas of culture production, from novel writing to indie film. It feels more and more that, particularly in the area of culture writing, minus a sustaining patron, sites can only survive through capitulating to the powerful currents of clickbait. Voices will survive here and there, but they will usually be attached to other income sources (like the inimitable Nick Pinkerton at Film Comment, run by the Film Society of the Lincoln Center) or be a part of a too big to fail organization (like the essential Richard Brody at the New Yorker).
Maybe it’s cold comfort now that the site is gone, but there’s a strong beauty in The Dissolve’s refusal to become more than useless. On its founding, Phipps declared that he hoped it would be a playground for film lovers, and that vision guided its writers throughout its life. It did not exist to generate content, or provide worth in utilitarian terms. It sought to provide a haven for those of us bitten by the bug of wonder, a place to explore the strange beauty of film in all its oddities. It never perfectly achieved that mission – who could? – but it consistently pursued its goals, and we were all the better for it.
Now we wander out into what feels like a chilling Scandinavian night. The meal is over, and we go our separate ways. I wish the feast could continue, but I feel confident that the memory will linger, and continue to influence my thinking and writing. Like the old woman at the table who discovers, for the first time, the joy of fine wine, a smile will break furtively across my face as I remember (and revisit: thankfully the site will remain archived in its entirety) the many hours of useless joy The Dissolve has given me. So cheers and all the best to The Dissolve’s staff, and all who continue to labor for the work of useless grace.
