Receiving freely
the world feels bountiful when it doesn't require you to be good
Lately I have been thinking about why I like Ratatouille so much. In the past, the thing I called out when I talked about why I like the movie was its lush depiction of Paris. Ratatouille-world is so charming and inviting, and its art style feels like just the right balance of immersive realism and painterly stylization. But now I think one of the reasons the movie is so compelling to me is its hedonism. I like that at the end of the day, neither Remi or Linguini are trying to be heroes - they just want to enjoy life. They pursue beauty and indulgence not because they think they deserve it, but because they want it.
Linguini used to kind of annoy me because I thought Colette was way too good for him. He’s kind of a dork and she’s super hot and cool. But he’s not even a dork in the She’s All That kind of way, where he actually has all these other positive traits like independence or intelligence or creativity. He’s just some random guy. But that doesn’t hold him back from pursuing Colette - not out of ego, but out of admiration. There’s something relieving about the idea of pursuing life’s bounty without self-consciousness. Having your eye on what you love instead of worrying about what loves you.
Remi’s the same. His most compelling scenes are the ones where he’s indulging, closing his eyes to savour the combination of strawberry and cheese or foraging for flavours to complement the mushroom he found outside. The driver of the plot is his talent for cooking but what’s appealing about his character isn’t the chef in him, but the epicurean. I find a lot of comfort in the idea that the natural world has so much beauty and pleasure that it offers without trying, and that it has no concept of worthiness. You don’t need to be good to be offered a luxurious breeze on a hot summer day. You don’t need to deserve to eat a ripe tomato.
Sometimes I feel so boxed in by my constant internal narration of how I’m doing and where my future is headed and what’s going on with my relationships. It makes my life feel so narrow, like the happy path and the things that I “want” to happen are so few and so probabilistic and so conditional. But when I think about turning my brain into animal mode, just appreciating the experiences and sensations around me in the physical world, the world feels so much more open, so much more generous, like it has all the dimensions and degrees of freedom I can handle.
i am moved