The Best Way to The Heart is Through Your Stomach: A Review of "The Hundred Foot Journey"

I have once hear heard it said that food is a universal language, but I didn’t quite know what that meant until I watch “The Hundred Foot Journey.” “The Hundred Foot Journey,” the 2014 feel good drama directed by Lasse Hallström, centers on the Kadam family as they work on opening up a restaurant in a small French town right across the street from a famous French restaurant with one Michelin star run by the strictly traditional Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). This movie mostly focuses on Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal) as he harnesses his natural skills as a chef and pursues his passion with the help of his family.

Something I loved about this movie is its constant use of contrast in imagery. Madame Mallory and the Kadam’s restaurants are separated by a long country road which splits the screen in two distinct halves. Madame Mallory’s restaurant is made of stone, but the kind of stone that looks dignified despite its age. Likewise, the Kadam’s restaurant is also made of stone, but it’s run down, and looks as though it could fall apart. Madame Mallory’s restaurant has trimmed green grass surrounding it; the Kadam’s grass is a bit wild. Madame Mallory’s restaurant has a bright white gravel path leading to the door; the Kadam’s have mostly dirt leading to their entryway. Madame Mallory’s customers eat inside; the Kadam’s customers eat in a courtyard. Even the scores that play at the two different setting are complete opposites: French classical at Mallory’s and festive Indian music at the Kadam’s. They are set up as complete opposites and from the beginning, Mallory and Papa hate each other. They seemingly share only one thing in common: their passion for good food. Even though both groups of people approach cooking in a different way, their passion for the art of cooking is what eventually unites them. I never thought of food as being more than a thing to keep me alive, but this movie had an interesting take on it. Hassan’s mother sums up the movies philosophy on food when she’s teaching Hassan how to cook: “But to cook you must kill. You make ghosts. You cook to make ghosts. Spirits that live on in every ingredient.” When I first heard this line, I was moved but I couldn’t quite grasp what she meant. It wasn’t until Hassan told Maguerite, Madame Mallory’s sous chef, that “food is memories,” that grasped the concept Steven Knight, the script writer, was trying to describe. We connect food with memories and thus with people in those memories. It feels more profound once you realize that Madame Mallory’s and the Kadam’s motive for being passionate for cooking are one and the same: to connect with lost loved ones. The Kadam’s lost their matriarch in a fire in India and Madame Mallory’s husband, who once owned the restaurant with her, died as well. Food was a way to keep their respective memories alive. Food really did make ghosts for them. It’s a bittersweet thought, but this realization brought the two fueling restaurants to a truce and created friends among the chefs. This passion for food and family was what eventually enabled Hassan to succeed in the cooking world. He worked in Paris and gained fame and recognition, but it eventually grew stale because he was away from his loved ones and cooking for his family is what originally brought him joy in the first place. You could then make the argument that food in this movie is a symbol of love and friendship, and aren’t those the true universal language? I finished “The Hundred Foot Journey” feeling hopeful and warm and fuzzy on the inside. I highly recommend you watch this movie if you want to watch a movie that will leave a smile on your face and a growling in your stomach. Plus, if that’s not enough for you, it stars Dame Helen Mirren! She’s an incredible actress and an international treasure! There is literally no downside to watching “The Hundred Foot Journey!”