Kitchen Stories
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Movie Reviews of Kitchen Stories
Movie Review: Great Service
Summary: 5 Stars
Item arrived promptly and in great condition, as was stated in the ad. Extremely happy with purchase and seller.Movie Review: sharp satire
Summary: 4 Stars
We humans are, by nature, a thoroughly inquisitive lot. We can't help but want to know what it is that makes everything - including the people around us - "tick." But can that curiosity, which has done so much to enlighten and advance us as a species, also wind up draining all the spontaneity and fun out of life? If everything is catalogued and labeled and put into little boxes, what happens to that sense of mystery that makes life worth living? The Swedish film "Kitchen Stories" is an ingenious little satire about mankind's insatiable propensity to study and analyze every damn thing in life and to subject even our most mundane daily activities to the rigors of scientific enquiry.
It`s the 1950`s and a group of Swedish researchers have descended on Norway to study "the kitchen habits of the single male," a truly pressing concern if ever there was one. The project involves setting up an "observer" in a volunteer's kitchen in order to watch and record the subject`s every move, leading, hopefully, to kitchen designs that will prove more fruitful and productive for the average citizen. The proviso is that there is to be no fraternizing whatsoever between the two parties, otherwise the "objective" nature of the experiment will be ruined. This is truly life as lived under a microscope, and the question early on becomes who will be the first to "crack" under the pressure of this totally unnatural state of affairs, the observer or the observed. And just how meaningful and reliable could information gleaned from such a contrived, unnatural setup be anyway? Given the complexity of human nature, how much can such a study truly tell us about ourselves and what we're really like?
The film focuses on two men who are caught up in the study: Isak, the relatively reluctant subject, and Nilsson, the analyst who takes up residence in Isak's kitchen, perched high above him on a five foot tall chair made especially for the occasion. At first, the air is tense between the two men, for Isak is not shy about showing his obvious resentment of this nonstop intrusion and prying into his daily life. But, after a few days, the mood thaws out and the two men become fast friends, drawn to each other by their common humanity and need for companionship. Soon, they are breaking all the "rules" of the study, sharing food, beverages and conversation with untoward abandon.
Some people may see this film as an allegory of life under a totalitarian regime, with the individual's every move being observed, recorded and monitored by an authoritarian power. I see it more as a simple study in human nature, as two men triumph over a dehumanized institution. Either way, the film does an interesting job showing just how easily the observer can become the observed if he lets his guard down. The film boasts excellent performances from Joachim Calmeyer as Isak, Tomas Norstrom as Nilsson, Bjorn Floberg as Isak's jealous friend, Grant, and Reine Brynolfsson as Nilsson's serious, Nervous Nelly boss who, like Grant, can't abide the intimacy he sees developing between evaluator and subject (albeit for totally different reasons).
"Kitchen Stories" is a quiet, almost muted film in which the characters rarely speak above a whisper, reflecting the somber mood of both the clinical experiment and the stark winter background against which the story takes place. Yet, there is warmth and humor in the relationship between Isak and Nilsson, and a great deal of quirky humor in both the premise and director Bent Hamer's sly execution of it. This is a film for those in search of the unique and the offbeat.
Movie Review: Quiet, Dry, Amusing...And Ultimately Touching
Summary: 4 Stars
This Norwegion/Swedish co-production starts out as a dry, deadpan comedy of differences and ends as a dry, deadpan comedy of friendships. Sweden's Home Research Institute has just finished a detailed, observation-based study of the Swedish housewife's movements through her kitchen. The purpose is to maximize efficiency. The next step is a study of Norwegian bachelors and how they use their kitchens. Observers are sent out to scientifically plot the movements of their subjects' kitchen use. Folke Nilsson (Tomas Norstrom) is sent to the small farmhouse of Isak Bjornsson (Joachim Calmeyer), who lives on the outskirts of the Norwegian village of Landstad. Nilsson's instructions are clear. He is to have no interactions with the subject. He is not to speak. He is not to offer help. He is to spend his time observing from a tall highchair in the corner of the kitchen, saying nothing and only plotting the subject's movements. The study gets off to a rocky start. Bjornsson is a crafty, aging man who has had second thoughts about agreeing to take part. He quietly makes things difficult for Nilsson, turning off the light, leaving a faucet to deliberately drip, even boring a small hole in the ceiling above where Nilsson perches so that he can observe the observer.
Slowly, small gestures between the men evolve into a friendship. Nilsson uses a salt shaker to salt his boiled egg for lunch and when Bjornsson can't find the shaker, Nilsson coughs and slightly motions to where it is. Bjornsson one afternoon makes two cups of coffee instead of one, and Nilsson climbs off his perch to have it, without speaking. On a cold night, Bjornsson finds a blanket for Nilsson. Soon the two taciturn men are seated at the kitchen table, talking quietly about things. A tentative relationship develops into a real friendship. The ending is as dry and touching as the rest of the movie.
As the two men become friends, of course, the kitchen study is fatally compromised. While the friendship evolves, director Bent Hamer creates a commentary on all sorts of things. The movie looks quietly and amusingly at stereotypes (Swedish efficiency; Norwegian quaintness), behavior and sociology. I hope all the sociology teachers who see this movie have senses of humor; if they don't, they're going to have a bad research day.
At one point, one of the other observers comes pounding on the door of Nilsson's little trailer. The man and his subject have begun drinking and talking together. Nilsson's colleague has run out of booze and needs two bottles of beer. Nilsson refuses and the man shouts drunkenly at him, "We're not allowed to drink. Not allowed to talk. Folke, what the hell are we doing? We sit up there on our pedestals and think we understand everything. How can we think we understand anything about people simply by observing them? We have to talk to each other! We have to communicate!"
This is a movie that sets its own pace, full of amusing and understated moments and has two fine performances by Joachim Calmeyer and Tomas Norstrom. The DVD picture looks fine. The movie is set in winter, and the picture is cold, clear and sunny with lots of snow on the ground.
Movie Review: Observing Batchelor Farmers
Summary: 4 Stars
For years now, humorist Garrison Keillor has successfully mined the image of the "Norwegian bachelor farmers" who populate the fringes of his fictional Lake Wobegon. Although few of his fans outside the precincts of Minnesota have probably ever actually met a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the vague image is nonetheless strong enough to carry Keillor's jokes and jabs. In "Kitchen Stories," a 2003 film by Bent Hamer, the rest of us finally have the chance to meet such a character, and it is an opportunity not to be missed.
Isak is the farmer in question, a cagey old man who mistakenly volunteers for a 1950s Swedish study of home efficiency. Having already "improved" the domestic efficiency of Scandinavian housewives, the nutty professors of the Swedish Home Research Institute set out to bestow a similar blessing on Norwegian bachelors. Isak is thus assigned to be observed by one Folke, himself a bachelor and a strict pupil of the official methods of the Institute's director.
While an early clash of wills between the observer and the observee set the stage for the film (and offer the early comedic bits and the film's few real laughs) what follows is the real story, a tale of human need that reaches out past conventions, artifice and rules of engagement. Isak slowly overcomes his resentment and obstructionist bent, while Folke's pointless fastidiousness simultaneously unravels. The result is what The Odd Couple might have been had Neil Simon decided to forego the slapstick.
Four subplots underpin the story without distracting from it. Isak's horse, a metaphor for the old man himself, is dying. Grant, Isak's heretofore best friend, is, literally, left out in the cold. Folke's boss, a real company man, desperately tries to hold the inane experiment together in the face of human nature overwhelming "scientific" protocols; and the futility of the whole effort is underscored by the Hugh Hefner antics of the project's absentee director.
The beauty of the story is in its simple portrayal of simple human need. In the clumsy hands of Hollywood, the ample openings for an eventual homosexual twist to the story of these lonely men would no doubt be seized and exploited. But such mercifully never develops and, like 2003's "Cuckoo," emotion and not sex is the story here. Viewers might quibble with the saccharin closing scene, but "Kitchen Stories" is, like its two central characters, a quiet gem. The denizens of Lake Wobegon would be pleased.
Movie Review: A gay movie doesn't have to have sex
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been really surprised in reading the 26 previous reviews that almost nothing has been said about what seemed to me the central theme in this movie - the repression of male love, which in the end triumphs. You can call it "male bonding" if you want (as one reviewer did), but frankly, "male bonding" doesn't involved jealousy to the point of attempted murder, a rather large and dramatic incident in the film which nobody who wrote reviews seems to have noticed. At the end of plot, intense jealousy is replaced by the mutual love which the two survivors had for the third - and apparently now for each other- and which is no doubt encouraged by the lack of options for them, a fact which gay men who have grown up in rural areas before the internet will instantly recognize. I would not hesitate to call this a "gay genre film" - it's all over the plot and the emotional development of the characters. If you ignore it, you're missing a major part of the film. The lack of overt sexual content simply points to the fact that while being "observed" by an (initially) unknown outsider, the two farmers in the kitchen are restrained from acting naturally - as one sees when their customary meeting for coffee one morning lasts all of a minute and is abruptly terminated by the presence of the "scientific observer" (Folke). Of course, as with any real piece of art, this film has many other aspects - the general repression of one's humanity by a narrowly scientific approach to life, the issues surrounding the tension between Norwegians and Swedes, etc. It also has a certain deadpan humor, although I can't imagine why people would be rolling in the aisles. But in the end, it's essentially a movie about men who fall in love, even if the circumstances don't allow sex on screen. Perhaps the message was a little too subtle for some. It's a good film. Watch it again, and get it.