For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - El Bulli
The Impression:
I’ve been a sideline obsessive of Ferran Adrian’s
now-defunct culinary gem El Bulli for many, many
years and consider my inability to get there before it
closed as one of my great failures in life. A film that
chronicles a year in the life of this restaurant and its
cooks and serving staff makes my mouth water.
The Reality:
El Bulli is a very European style documentary. This
isn’t talking heads and recreations and snappy interludes,
this is a free-floating camera slowly moving its way around
rooms populated by some of the most talented food folk,
well, anywhere. Though paced as if to match the seasons its
spans, El Bulli is nonetheless fascinating. We aren’t
force fed any sort of information regarding the menu, or the
ideas behind El Bulli, or just what Ferran Adrian has
cooking in his mind (he’s one of the great stone faced
thinkers of all time) - we’re just shown the creation of the
most dynamic menu possibly ever and given free reign to
insert our own opinions and ideas. Only at the end of the
film, after we’ve seen the brainstorming, the testing, the
set-up and the final execution does director Gereon Wetzel
show us what these food-brains have been cooking up and only
then did I realize how greatly I’d wanted to know. A
slow-burner, but well worth the time.
The Lesson:
Food obsesses me and films about food, slow or fast,
titillate me.
- Noah Sanders
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