Movies with important scenes involving food

[Khan]

I’m having trouble getting my head around why you excluded Harold and Kumar, furt. Getting to White Castle symbolizes coming of age for both of them. Harold gets the courage to tell off his supervisors and ask out Maria, and Kumar realizes he really wants to be a doctor. When they turned down going to the weiner shack or whatever they rejected taking the easy path/doing what was expected of them. You could also say that place also played on the homoerotic undertones between Goldstein and Rosenberg.

@Raguleader

Also, lots of folks see a theme of characters eating oranges and later being killed or dying, which could have all sorts of fun potential deep discussions. One fun path I’ve taken down this train of thought is that the oranges could refer to the Fruit of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, the eating of which lead to Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden and doomed to mortality.

I remember from the news around the time of the '95 Kobe earthquake that oranges are offered as food for the dead in Japanese culture.

[Unauthorized_Cinnamon]

I’ve got an additional *Moonstruck * scene: Cher cooks Nicolas Cage a steak, which he requests well done, but she says, “You’ll eat it bloody to feed your blood,” and he eats it and says it’s good. Control, compatibility, and it dovetails with the whole “You’re a wolf” idea.

In The Hours, the birthday cake Julianne Moore makes (twice) is heavily symbolic.

*To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar * has a scene where drag queen Patrick Swayze adds some seasoning to a dish battered wife Stockard Channing is making, and it is entirely revealing of her situation and the effect the queens have on her life.

In Sense and Sensibility, they discuss cutting beef and sugar out of their menus due to poverty, but have lavish dinners at much richer people’s houses. Significantly, the relation whose cottage they are renting is very fat.

*Point of No Return * has two scenes that spring to mind: Bridget Fonda’s rebellious character shows her contempt for the etiquette class by taking the instructions on eating to an extreme (“Bone.”), and later, she uses ravioli as a tool of seduction.

*The Ref * has lots of food issues throughout. The Scandinavian cooking symbolizes Caroline’s lack of purpose, as well as her conflict with her inlaws. She dreams of being served her husband’s head on a plate of spinach, with his penis stuck in his ear, and the waiter says, “Don’t eat the penis, it’s only garnish.” Finally, there’s some fun stuff with the jerk who dresses up as Santa, distributes vile fruitcakes, and mooches food and booze off Christmas partiers.

[Ellen_Cherry]

@Otto

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover has a very interesting final scene involving food of a sort.

Or how about Jaws?

I think Otto’s joking here, but I came to specifically mention The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. The final scene is really the culmination of everything that has come before – the movie is ABOUT food and the characters’ relationship with it. For good, for evil, for lust, for love.

It’s also an extremely disturbing movie, and probably rated X. I highly recommend it.

[Jenny_Haniver]

I love this thread!

I also have to third or fourth Moonstruck. Food and music, that’s the whole movie. Whoever outlined some of the food scenes before missed The Bread Scene! The scene introduces Nicholas Cage as the maimed owner of a bakery who has given up on life, essentially, via this insane rambley monologue about how much he hates baking bread.

More suggestions I haven’t seen listed yet:

Home for the Holidays: The whole movie is about Thanksgiving, so there is a lot of food in it, but specifically I think the students would do well with the climactic scene in which the misfit sibling, who is a vegetarian, winds up with the thanksgiving turkey dumped in her lap, and she’s covered in turkey juice and is completely horrified, while her brother and sister try not to laugh but can’t hold it in. Easy to analyze that one.

Spirited Away: Another easy one – the gluttony of Sen’s parents becomes literal when they steal from the gods – they are turned into pigs. This is kind of an extention of their previous yuppie attitudes, i.g. “Everything is going to be alright, I’ve got a credit card.” (or something like that.) There is a lot to do with consumption in this movie, actually, you could probably find quite a few scenes to fit the bill.

Notorious: Hmm, another Hitchcock movie. This one is about a fed falling in love with the daughter of a traitor – she is also kind of a mess, and there is a scene where she tries to cook him a chicken – to display that she can be a normal, upstanding, (sober) girlfriend, but it doesn’t work out very Donna Reed.

Bridget Jones’ Diary: Either the Turkey Curry Buffet and mini-gerkins, and lumpy gravy, as class indicators or the scene where Bridget tries to cook her friends dinner and overreaches.

And actually, When Harry Met Sally is a good suggestion for way more than that scene. The scene where Sally orders during the road trip is basically a character study.

[fluiddruid]

@Septima

There is a scene in Pulp fiction where Jules is scaring the life out of some random guys by asking for a bite of an hawaiian hamburger. Took me ages to make heads or tails of what he was on about. The date between Vincent and Mia could be used as well.

There’s also other appropriate scenes from Pulp Fiction. For example, the “Royale with Cheese” scene - though this is talking about food, rather than eating - and the extended scene in a restaurant that’s robbed, including the “sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie” exchange.

[GargoyleWB]

Better Off Dead uses food as a communication device to represent that love can be expressed across age, culture, or social demographic. For example:

The mom, in a desparate plea to connect with her teenage son, serves “Fronsch” toast, fries, and bread. This also foreshadows the impending cultural hurdles facing Lane and Monique.

Later, we revisit Lane and Monique as she hurles oranges at a street sign in frustration. Here the orange echoes (in a suitably round and lumpy way) the confusion between the word “testicle” and “tentacle”.

[Spoke]

In The Good Girl, Jennifer Anniston and Jake Gyllenhaal are having an affair. Gyllenhaal has some juvenile attitudes about the whole thing. They stop at a roadside stand and buy some blackberries. Anniston tells Gyllenhaal to have a blackberry. He looks at them and says, “They’re dirty!”

Then he tastes one.

“They’re sweet!”

Now he looks like he’s enjoying the blackberries a little too much. Anniston slaps them out of his hand.

“They’re dirty!” she says. “I think I saw a bug.”

[It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery]

Wow - we are 2 pages into this discussion, and nobody has mentioned My Dinner With Andre.

[Jenny_Haniver]

@spoke-

In The Good Girl, Jennifer Anniston and Jake Gyllenhaal are having an affair. Gyllenhaal has some juvenile attitudes about the whole thing. They stop at a roadside stand and buy some blackberries. Anniston tells Gyllenhaal to have a blackberry. He looks at them and says, “They’re dirty!”

Then he tastes one.

“They’re sweet!”

Now he looks like he’s enjoying the blackberries a little too much. Anniston slaps them out of his hand.

“They’re dirty!” she says. “I think I saw a bug.”

Spoke, isn’t that scene not so much about maturity as that she’s trying to poison him, but chickens out?

[Spoke]

Its been a while since I saw the movie, Jenny, so I may be misremembering. I don’t remember the part you mention, though. Are you sure about that?

[Jenny_Haniver]

@spoke-

Its been a while since I saw the movie, Jenny, so I may be misremembering. I don’t remember the part you mention, though. Are you sure about that?

Pretty sure. It happens when she is trying to find a way out of the relationship, and hears a co-worker died from some horrible microbe they picked up from blackberries bought at this roadside stand that hadn’t been washed. So, when she sees it while she’s out with Holden, she insists they stop and get some. She’s hoping he’ll get food poisoning and die so she won’t have to break up with him.

[Spoke]

That rings a bell, Jenny. I think you’re right. (I still think there’s some sexual symbolism going on, though.)

[Unauthorized_Cinnamon]

@Jenny Haniver

Pretty sure. It happens when she is trying to find a way out of the relationship, and hears a co-worker died from some horrible microbe they picked up from blackberries bought at this roadside stand that hadn’t been washed. So, when she sees it while she’s out with Holden, she insists they stop and get some. She’s hoping he’ll get food poisoning and die so she won’t have to break up with him.

Yes, that is exactly right.

[MovieMogul]

@zagloba

Also, Theatre of Blood, in which Vincent Price plays a Shakespearean actor who gets his revenge on a critic by tricking him into eating a meat pie made from his beloved poodles.

It should be noted that Price’s character is exacting revenge on each of his enemies employing a different play by the Bard, and this scenario he lifts from Titus Andronicus.

Lots of good things being mentioned–especially the Bunuels–and I would add Le Grande Bouffe, where the leads vow to eat themselves to death in an orgiastic frenzy, except that it’s certainly not appropriate for a school environment.

[Balance]

@Jenny Haniver

Spirited Away: Another easy one – the gluttony of Sen’s parents becomes literal when they steal from the gods – they are turned into pigs. This is kind of an extention of their previous yuppie attitudes, i.g. “Everything is going to be alright, I’ve got a credit card.” (or something like that.) There is a lot to do with consumption in this movie, actually, you could probably find quite a few scenes to fit the bill.

The gluttony scene with Noh-Face is possibly even riper for this sort of analysis.

Sir Prize mentioned the Harry Potter films somewhere upthread, but didn’t elaborate. The first movie probably offers the best scenes for this purpose.

The candy scene on the train is a good one; Harry getting some of everything for the cart, even though he has no idea what most of it is, could be regarded as symbolic of his impulse to explore his new situation (both his entrance into the magical world and his newly acquired wealth). Ron’s sandwiches underscore his family environment–their relative poverty, his fear of being lost or overlooked among his brothers, and his defensiveness about his family. The sharing of the treats, of course, marks the beginning of their friendship.

A contrast between the breakfast scene with the Dursleys and the first banquet at Hogwarts might also be interesting. In the breakfast scene, he was essentially relegated to servant status–cooking and serving food, while the sat down to their breakfast. (Did he even get a bite of anything in the scene?) At the banquet, he was sitting and eating with his peers, and got to eat whatever he wanted. Again, this underlines the change in his status. (As I recall, it was emphasized slightly more in the novel. The text specifically mentioned that he was never allowed to eat as much as he wanted with the Dursleys, and that Dudley always took anything he really wanted. The banquet, on the other hand, featured an abundance of all his favorite foods.)

[Horatio_Hellpop]

In Hitchcock’s Rope, the creepy Leopold and Loeb types kill a kid, stuff him into a steamer trunk and trick his parents into eating dinner off of it.

Also, Rocky Horror Picture Show: “Oh no! Meat Loaf again!”

[HeyHomie]

Titanic

There’s a scene where the villain (Billy Zane’s character) roughs up Rose and then orders room service for the two of them. He orders some elaborate dinner while Rose sits there, imprisoned, both literally and figuratively. It’s almost as if the food that Zane is ordering is one of the tools he uses to oppress her.

In another scene, the first-class passengers are in the elaborate dining room, dressed to the nines, eating unbelievable fancy food. The passengers can scarcely conceal how indescribably bored they all are. Cut to the steerage dining room, where they’re eating simple fare but having the time of their lives. The different styles of food represent different approaches to life: the rich have their fancy food but are so restrained by polite society that they can’t truly enjoy it, while the poor make do with what they’ve got and have a good time of it.

Or something.

[dotchan]

This is not really a movie scene involving food, IIRC, since it was in the original book, I believe, but…

In at least one (or more) of the Dracula movies, Our Clueless Hero is invited dinner with the Count (not as one of the dishes yet) and cuts his finger with the bread knife. The Count immediately takes an unhealthy interest in Our Clueless Hero, making him quite uncomfortable.

[StGermain]

There’s a little-known movie called "A Wedding for Bella (alternate title - “The Bread, My Sweet”. Scott Baio plays a Mergers and Acquistions guy who also runs a bakery with his two brothers. When his surrogate mother, the Italian immigrant woman who lives upstairs from the bakery, becomes terminally ill, he finds and woos her daughter so the mother can see her before she dies. Food is like a second star of this movie, and the sort of underlying theme is that modern society is like the junkfood Dominic sees his co-workers eat. The preservatives and empty calories of corporate life versus good homemade bread and a full life. As a secondary plot, as the woman is getting sicker, the mentally retarded brother keeps making smaller and smaller pies for her, until she can no longer eat, the pies mirroring the ebbing of her life.

StG

[Jeff_Lichtman]

I don’t think anyone has mentioned the diner scene in Five Easy Pieces.