“I get to touch people’s lives with what I do and I love it and I want
to share this with you.”
- El Jefe
The science of cooking has to do with the recipe: ingredients,
measurements, and timing. The art of cooking has to do with feeding people:
presentation, atmosphere, and love. Cooking is the most accessible form of art. Books, movies, and music can nourish the soul but one can live
without it. You need to eat. Thus, every meal is an opportunity.
I loved this movie like I love good food. It is a representation of all
the good things in life. The story is about Karl Kasper, a chef in a creative
rut. He runs a kitchen that has not changed its menu in five years. The owner,
played by Dustin Hoffman, insists against innovation. They have had no
complaints and are doing well financially. If you went and saw the Rolling
Stones he asks, wouldn’t you be mad if they didn’t play “Satisfaction.” Play
the hits he recommends. Karl is dejected by this situation. He explains his
frustrations in a way that should be instantly accessible to anyone who does
art for a living. “Ahi Tuna is a huge crowd pleaser. You put Ahi Tuna on a menu
and it will sell out. We all know this. But there are chefs that cook food that
they believe in and that people will try because they are open to a new
experience and they will end up liking it.” That sentence is a great
explanation for this movie. The writer/director/star is Jon Favreau who started
out in Hollywood as a writer/actor mostly known for Swingers but then became the big time blockbuster director of such
hits as Elf, Iron Man, and Iron Man 2. The man can cook his Ahi
Tuna. But this movie, his first writing credit in ten years, is a smaller more
personal film that not so many people will see but should be a treat for anyone
open to a new experience and I bet they will really like it.
First of all, Jon Favreau did a perfect job of casting by casting
himself as Karl Kasper. I can’t think a better actor in this role. Favreau is
my ideal notion of what a chef should look like. He’s a big guy but not too out
of shape, you know the type of guy who obviously loves food but doesn’t eat
terrible junk all day. And it may just be his inner director coming out, but he
carries gravitas around him in the way he speaks and acts. At the same time he’s
got the focus of a great artist. Just look at that guy make that grilled cheese
sandwich for his son. It’s the most important thing in the world to him at that
moment.
You can also see Favreau’s connection to the bigger blockbuster world in
the very efficient way the movie is edited and the also in the special effects,
which do a very good job of representing the digital cloud of social
networking. To be specific, there is a lot of Twitter in this movie and the
effects that Favreau uses to portray are perfect. They do what they are
supposed to do and nothing else. Something that doesn’t work so well because it
is distracting is his Hollywood hookup that allows him to cast huge movie stars
in tiny cameo roles. But notice what I just did there. I just said that Robert
Downey Jr.’s cameo in this movie was the worst thing because it was
distracting. Do I love this movie or what?
Things come to a breaking point with Karl Kasper at his restaurant when a
prominent food critic, played by the distinguished and portly Oliver Platt,
completely takes apart Karl’s lazy cooking. And here is where Karl earns super
great artist points with me. He cares what the food critic says. He cares in
general about what his work means to be people. Forced to cook for the critic
the same menu by the owner of the restaurant, Kasper quits instead. And while
witnessing the acidic live tweeting of the menu cooked by his Soux Chef, he
decides to walk into the restaurant he just walked out of and lays down the
ultimate criticism of criticism an artist has a right to. The subject is a
Chocolate Lava Cake. The critic decries that Kasper didn’t even have the
courage to undercook it. Kasper angrily explains that a Chocolate Lava Cake is
not undercooked, it is cooked in such a way so the middle is molten, like Lava
you Dick! What is Karl saying here? The critic does not know what he is talking
about. He doesn’t even know how the art is made. You have no right to criticize
what I’m doing if you don’t know how it is supposed to be done. Substitute
‘Chocolate Lava Cake’ for ‘movie’ for ‘painting’ for ‘song’ for ‘architecture’
for anything really.
At the bottom, Karl’s ex-wife, played by Sofia Vergara, hires him as a
nanny for their son on her next trip to Miami. In a bistro in Little Havana
that serves Cuban sandwiches the real reason for the trip becomes apparent.
Sofia wants Karl to open a food truck. He gets to be his own boss. He gets to
be creative. (She gets a great food truck for her event planning business.) And
at this point the movie makes a pivot. Karl’s son, played by Emjay Anthony,
goes along for the ride. The movie becomes not only a great movie about being a
great artist but also being a great father. Karl puts his son to work in his
food truck. The first thing have to do is clean the truck; the lesson being
learned obviously is that doing things the correct way takes work. Love takes
work. It takes standards. And it’s worth it. The best moment of the movie is
when Karl’s son is about to serve a Cuban sandwich that has been burned. The
kid’s reasoning is that the person who will be getting the sandwich is not
paying for it. Karl takes him outside the truck and has this dialogue.
“Slow down for a second. Is this boring to you?”
“No, I like it.”
“Yeah well I love it. Everything that’s good that has happened to me in
my life came because of that. I might not do everything great in my life. Okay
I’m not perfect. I’m not the best husband and I’m sorry if I wasn’t the best
father. But I’m good at this. And I want to share this with you. I want to
teach you what I learned. I get to touch people’s lives with what I do. And it
keeps me going and I love it. And I think if you give it a shot you might love
it too.
“Yes, chef.”
“Now, should we have served that sandwich?”
“No, chef.”
“That’s my son. Get back in there. We got hungry people. He’s ready to
cook!”
Giving kids work is important for discipline but great parenting
involves teaching kids why the work they are doing is worth doing at all and to
do that you have to treat your kids as if they were intelligent human beings.
You have to trust them with unflinching information about the world. Traditionally,
so much of parenting is merely locking your kids in a tower and hoping sensory
deprivation will bide the time till they are past the age of impulsive
behavior. That won’t work in the 21st century. Kids will find out anything
and everything anyway so it is up to parents to actually do work now and affirmatively
teach kids correct things not merely shelter them from bad ones. Hopefully they
will figure those things out before they have kids. Most don’t. In “Chef” the
son is not treated like a child. The reasoning as Jon Leguizamo, our chef’s
soux chef, points out, “You’re kitchen staff. Kitchen staff doesn’t have an
age!” Exactly.
God I loved this movie. Try not to see it on an empty stomach and give
the best cook you know a big fat kiss afterwards.
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