Blog Entry #11: "Big Night" vs. "Dinner Rush"



One main similarity between the food films "Big Night" and "Dinner Rush" is the presence of Italian culture and Italian food being cooked in each film. For example, in "Dinner Rush", despite the head chef's disdain for Italian food, sausages, peppers, and pasta are shown to be an essential part of the restaurant's cuisine. The sous-chef, Duncan, enjoys and specializes in cooking these Italian dishes for the restaurant's customers, and despite the head chef's plan to NOT cook Italian food, this helps to bring the Italian culture into the restaurant through the food. Similarly, in "Big Night", Italian food, as well as Italian culture overall, are an integral part of the restaurant owned by Primo and Secondo. Since the two are Italian brothers (like Mario & Luigi), their speciality of cooking is Americanized versions of traditional Italian foods, which is the main type of food that the two brothers cook in their restaurant, showing how in both of these films, the inclusion of Italian food in the restaurants' menus help to add some extra cultural tastes and flavors to their foods. 

However, the timespan of these two films are quite different from each other. For example, the events of "Dinner Rush" all take place within one night at the restaurant and neither the location or time changes throughout the film, showing a unity of time and unity of place. However, in "Big Night", the events of the film take place over the course of several days, where the time of day constantly changes from day to night. Also, "Big Night" shows different locations apart from the restaurant (e.g. the beach, other parts of the city), showing that "Big Night" does not share the unities of time & distance that "Dinner Rush" has. 

Of the two films, I liked "Big Night" because it had a more powerful message resonating throughout the film about the importance of family and balancing out one's business with their familial bonds. Particularly, the last scene of "Big Night" shows how, despite all of the arguments and personal problems the two brothers Secondo and Primo have had throughout the film, they still love each other and, in truth, need each other to run the restaurant successfully. To me, this is a more powerful message to have in a film because, while the gangster activity in "Dinner Rush" does make for a dramatic story, "Big Night" does add a moral of family and forgiveness in the plot and makes it more emotionally impactful. 

Dinner Rush - Wikipedia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Entry #8

Image
The film "Tortilla Soup" and the original "Eat Drink Man Woman" share many similar elements with each other. First of all, the overall plot of each film is about a male cook who have lost their senses of taste yet cook incredible meals for their families. In both of these films, the family members consists of three daughters, all of whom are beginning their own adult lives and have started to break away from their family traditions. In addition, the three different paths each daughter takes are similar in both films. For example, the oldest daughter of each family converts to Christianity and also works as a school teacher, while the middle daughter in each film enjoys cooking and shares the same passions as her father, but never pursues that career choice. Finally, the youngest daughter in each film does not have any set career path in her life, and is slightly more rebellious and defiant than the other two. However, one main difference between these two films,...
Read more

Blog Entry #5

Image
As demonstrated in this film, the role of food is not only to reflect on the culture and ethnical backgrounds of those preparing it (i.e. Tita and her family), but also allows one to showcase their own personal identity into the food that they are making. In the film Like Water for Chocolate , the foods themselves have several cultural and national identities, both in the final food product and the ingredients that go into it. Most of the foods cooked in this film have "imported" ingredients, that is to say ingredients that come from other countries to add extra flavor and perhaps even enhance the quality of the food. For example, one of the foods mentioned in the article and from the original novel, Christmas cakes called "tortas de Navidad", is cooked with American ingredients (i.e. chili), thereby crossing both the traditional Mexican taste and American flavors together. In the film however, some of the food cooked maintains the Mexican identity shared by Tita an...
Read more

Blog Entry #2

Image
In Babette's Feast , the initial role of food in the Protestant congregation was to merely have enough to survive and be able to live off of. For example, before Babette arrived, the people in the village primarily ate ale-and-bread soup, not anything too luxurious or exotic for the townspeople to really sink their teeth into. This demonstrates that, for the small congregation of believers in this film, food is not anything more than a needs for survival, and is not seen as a form of culinary art and exotic taste. Due to this, the congregation have sacrificed their own senses of pleasure and enjoyment and have repressed their emotions for the sake of their religious beliefs, which is of more importance to them. However, despite the congregation's agreement to remain indifferent about the feast that Babette prepares, the colorful, exotic foods eaten by the group (as opposed to the bland, plain soup they're used to eating) eventually succeeds in evoking repressed emotion...
Read more