The Best Moment in Film, 2007

The best single moment in any film from 2007 takes place toward the end of “Ratatouille.” The notoriously fickle food critic Anton Ego takes a bite of the titular dish, typically scoffed at as peasant food but now being served to him in a very swanky Parisian restaurant. With the first bite he is taken in a flash back to his youth, a little boy at the doorstep of his mother’s kitchen. She’s making him ratatouille. Back to real time, he drops his pen to the floor, having an emotional reaction to the food that is beyond words–and the filmmaker Brad Bird is smart enough to let the scene pass without dialog.

Some of the most revelatory moments we have with food as adults come when taste or smell takes us back to another time and place in our lives.  Sometimes the remembrance can be nostalgic, sometimes it can be very emotional.  Those memories that are tied to eating are vivid and amazing, and I’m grateful to the makers of “Ratatouille” for expressing them so eloquently in film.