http://www.karenblixen.com/babette.html
Excellent information about the author of the story on which the film is based: Karen Blixen, who wrote under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0092603
Basic information about the film, including cast and crew list.
Introduction to Babette’s Feast
My introduction to the film, which includes information on the author of the story on which the film is based, a map of Denmark, and a brief plot summary.
Key Lines from Babette’s Feast
My collection of key lines from the film. Includes the translated text of all the hymns and songs in the film.
The Feast as Utopia: Theological Dimensions of Feasts in The Brothers Karamazov and Babette’s Feast, David Schimpf
A paper I presented at an international, interdisciplinary conference in Atlanta, November, 1999. The first section provides a brief summary of the significance and meaning of food and feasting in the Jewish and Christian traditions. The second section, which, for the purposes of this film, you may decide to skip over, examines the transformation of the character Alyosha in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, focusing on his participation in a mystical feast. The third section analyzes General Lowenhielm’s transformation of perspective through the course of the feast in this film.
Thesis and summary: This paper will examine, from the Christian sacramental perspective, the nature and implications of feasting in two works: Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and the film Babette’s Feast. Although both works are suffused with eating and feasting imagery, this paper will focus on two significant and telling examples of how these works integrate it: Alyosha’s mystical experience of the wedding at Cana in The Brothers Karamazov and the spiritual journey of General Loewenhelm that culminated in the feast in Babette’s Feast. Both Alyosha and the general experienced a fulfillment, a utopia that is at once familiar and surprising, mundane and transcendent, sustaining and celebrating, through participating in a feast.
http://www.snu.edu/english/babette/index.htm
Several short student papers on the religious and spiritual dimensions of Babette's Feast. The first section presents a brief explanation of the place of food and feasting in the Jewish and Christian traditions, the second on the character development of Alyosha in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, focusing on his experience of a mystical feast, and General Lowenhielm’s transformation of character in Babette’s Feast. You can probably skip over the section on The Brothers Karamazov.
http://www.unomaha.edu/~wwwjrf/BabetteWW.htm
Babette's Feast: A Religious Film, by Wendy M. Wright. Abstract: This paper explores the various ways in which Babette's Feast might be called a religious film. First, yet perhaps least significantly, the film's subject matter is overtly religious. It treats of a late nineteenth century Danish Christian sect, focusing attention on the tale of two pious women whose life experiences are defined solely by their religious beliefs. Second, the film explores reality through the foundational myth of Christianity and through literary and visual symbols that derive from that faith tradition. Especially it contrasts two modalities of Christian apprehension: one which sees religiosity as primarily a matter of moral living, demeaning sensual engagement in the created world; the other which acknowledges the "sacramental" texture and depths of the created order and discovers there the divine. Third, the film as a work of art, quite apart from its subject matter or its exploration of reality through the medium of Christian symbols, is in itself profoundly religious. This is meant in the sense that its artistry allows the viewer to apprehend reality contemplatively, to take a long, loving look at the real in such a way that the hidden, sacred dimension of reality is revealed.
Babette's Feast: Feasting with Lutherans, Mary Podles
Presents an essay on the motion picture `Babette's Feast,' based on a short story by Isak Dinesen. Evocation of Scandinavian painting throughout the film; Plot; Variation from Dinesen's story.
Surprised by Grace, Baker, Rob
Quotation from articles: SOME OF THE most memorable moments of hospitality seem to come virtually by surprise: unexpected, uninvited, they are like gifts that the recipient--and at times even the donor-didn't anticipate. Though there has to be a readiness, a preparation, inherent in a person's attitude--on the part of both the host and the guest--that allows hospitality to take place, the actual act itself often comes without warning or is, at best, a sort of accidental by-product of a purposeful but ordinary gesture of hospitality that somehow went slightly awry in an interesting way, obtaining higher results than those involved intended. These elusive, almost indefinable moments are instances of "amazing grace," in the words of a favorite Christian hymn.
http://www.unomaha.edu/~wwwjrf/kierkega.htm
Kierkegaard at Babette’s Feast: The Return to the Finite, by Jean Schuler. Examines the connections between the original story, the film, and the thought of Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard.
http://www.jacwell.org/reviews/1998-Spring-Babette's Feast.htm
Babette’s Feast: The Generosity of God, by Robert A. Flanagan. Thesis: Since the Eucharist is the continued self-giving of God begun at the Creation and renewed in the Incarnation, it is His primary act of generosity continued into time. Babette’s Feast helps us to explore that generosity, and does it with the image of a meal, its transforming quality and its locus as the place of transformation.
http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/894126fatula.html
Mary Ann Fatula: Current Trends: Feasts of Grace. Thesis: This
simple story has a way of nudging us to give ourselves back to
God in a final, irrevocable act of self-surrender and gratitude
and love. It has a way of inspiring us to work for in love and to
wait for in hope further feasts of grace which now seem
impossible to us, feasts of grace we long to share with our
family, our community, our nation, our world. These are feasts
that surely will be given us, beyond our wildest expectations, in
heaven. But they also can be given us, as Loewenhielm learned,
even now, in the very place we had despaired of, in the way we
could never have dreamed.