The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Rat

July 5th, 2007

I think it’s safe to say that Ratatouille is now my favorite Pixar movie. I think it’s also safe to say that no Pixar movie will ever be my favorite animated Disney movie. To attain that lofty title, a film would have to surpass Beauty and the Beast, and unless some unforeseen ingredients manage to creep into the Pixar soup, that ain’t gonna happen (maybe I’ll elaborate more on the reasons in a future post).

First of all, let me say how much I enjoyed Ratatouille, as I did The Incredibles before it. There’s no question that writer-director Brad Bird is making today’s best animated American films. They’re visually stunning, and the plot and script display evidence of human thought, rather than being assembled by a committee intent upon bashing the message of “Just believe in yourself!” into youngsters’ heads. There are many moments in Bird’s films that genuinely amuse, rather than trying for pop-culture-savvy or below-the-belt humor.

And yet, in the days since I’ve seen Ratatouille, little lasting impression has remained with me beyond, “Gee, that rat had cute paws,” and “I’m hungry.”

Critics have been lauding Ratatouille almost unanimously—in part, it seems, because it prominently features discussions about art and criticism. Our rodent protagonist, Remy, is, we are told, an artist in the kitchen. He seems to know instinctively when a soup calls for chervil or tarragon. But is it instinct? Is it a “gift,” as some moments in the film seem to imply? What does it mean when Remy’s inspiration, Parisian (and human, though deceased) chef Auguste Gusteau, repeatedly voices his motto, “Anyone can cook”?

It’s clear that not just anyone can cook, because the young chef-wannabe Linguini never rises above miserable failure in his own culinary efforts. Apparently having the desire and the training (as well as “talent in the bloodline”) is not enough to make an artist. True? Sadly, yes, as many an aspiring artist has no doubt realized. Linguini’s story is a somewhat tragic one—or it would be, if it were fully explored. Instead, he is supplied with a brilliant rat in his hat.

Toward the end of the film, the acerbic food critic Anton Ego tries to clarify Gusteau’s motto: “Not everyone can be a great artist,” he says. “But a great artist can come from anywhere.” Perhaps Gusteau should have said it more clearly from the beginning: “Anyone who has the gift, even a rat who has the gift, can cook.” Those who don’t have the gift apparently can be placated by romance: Linguini’s artistic ambitions rather suddenly disappear as he becomes enthralled with Colette, the restaurant’s only female chef.

While the film’s message is a welcome relief from the aforementioned “believe in yourself” drivel, it still seems confused. Bird seems to want to celebrate the democracy of art, at the same time that he has to acknowledge that, realistically, the feast isn’t available to all. This is, indeed, a difficult issue for anyone to wrestle with—which is the reason I’d like to see it done more completely and honestly in Ratatouille.

But, you say, surely a kid’s movie doesn’t need a comprehensive and consistent philosophy of art! Well, first of all, Bird has said that he didn’t intend Ratatouille exclusively for children—a fact that should be obvious to anyone watching the film. Sure, children will enjoy it, for many of the same reasons that I did: bright colors, funny dialogue, and cute, fluffy rodents. But I think they actually would enjoy it even more if it dealt more fully with the pain of wanting to be an artist and not succeeding. Kids know what failure means. They face it every day, in some arena or another, and a chorus of “believe in yourself” isn’t going to help them know how to deal with it. All the more reason for a thoughtful, independent-thinking movie to step up to the plate and show someone wrestling with the realization that he isn’t an artist—at least not in the way that he had hoped to be. And once that realization dawns, perhaps he will see new, previously unsuspected gifts unfolding in the wake of the defeated dream.

P.S. I hope it doesn’t sound as if I’m advocating that movies deliberately insert a moral for kids about dealing with failure. Rather, I’m just irritated because it seems like this theme was already there in Ratatouille, and it wasn’t dealt with truthfully. Instead, there was more of the “family opposition to art” theme than there needed to be in Remy’s story.

P.P.S. Ratatouille’s “art” theme was also a bit confused in its treatment of commercialization. We are supposed to despise Gusteau’s successor Chef Skinner because he has used Gusteau’s name to market a line of frozen TV dinners (and several critics have seen here an allegory of Disney’s decline). Parts of the movie could read as an advertisement for the Slow Food movement. But our hero Remy dreams of becoming a culinary artist because he has seen Gusteau’s cooking show on television—a medium which, in the U.S. at least, is dependent upon the marketing of products. His secondary education comes through Gusteau’s cookbook, itself a kind of commercial product. Gusteau’s democratic theories about art can’t be spread without the aid of commercialism. The two arenas aren’t as separate as the film’s surface suggests.

P.P.P.S. The presence of grumpy critic Anton Ego in Ratatouille makes it a dangerous enterprise to say anything negative about the movie, for fear of being labeled a snob. I’m undoubtedly a snob in some respects, but I hope it’s not snobbish to expect that an animated movie could, in fact, deal with the theme of art in as complex a way as the artsy-est independent drama.

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