Make 'the Hundred Foot Journey'
The Hundred-Foot Journey is about all of the things that make life worth living – food, love, family, tradition and creativity. It is the melding of seeming opposites into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The spectacularly talented cast move the film along at the speed that life should be lived. Helen Mirren always delivers, but the other relatively unknown actors including leads Manish Dayal, Charlotte Le Bon and Om Puri deliver a believable dynamic across the board. Surely, they must be a family. It is the human connection that makes this film so beautiful. When a single woman can stop to help out a family that has been in an accident and then invite them to her house to eat, that is a beautiful, magical place to live. Anyone in the United States would have assumed that the family had a cell phone and just driven on by, except maybe in Alaska. These small kindnesses keep the brewing competition between the two elders (Mirren and Puri) from taking over the film. In fact, it is one dreadful act and the kindness that follows after that brings the elders together. Success threatens to rip the family and budding relationships apart, but the ending can be forgive because no one could begrudge these characters for choosing the right thing for them. Each person is following a passion, and it makes their lives interesting and worthwhile. When a recipe has been the same for 200 years, it may just be time to change it because 200 years has been long enough. Food is memories. Food connects the boy to his mother. Food connects people to different moods. This movie is a lot like food, and it is the movie that you should be seeing this weekend. |
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