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A Quintessential Lesson in World Peace from a Magical Mayan Bon Bon
A perfect sweet of a movie reveals what could heal us, but first we have to succumb to enchantment
One of the most marvelous gifts of art, whether it’s cooking or making movies, is how art heals us if we would but just let it. The current spate of modern-day book burning among deeply ignorant and fearful parents speaks to the unspeakable lack of joy in such lives, and how the unholy terror of using religion to make us hateful towards one another can, if we would let it, be both solved and soothed with grace.
If we would be but a little vulnerable to joy, to magic, to the gifts of life lived in full.
That is the lesson of the perfect 2000 movie Chocolat, based on the book by English author Joanne Harris, and directed with great affection and beauty by Lasse Hallström.
One of the gifts of getting older is that we can learn to see things differently. When I saw this movie in 2000 I only saw a love story encased in truffles. Twenty-two years later, I see something else entirely: layers and layers of social commentary much like a complex chocolate cake.
This is the beauty of streaming services. I’d forgotten about Chocolat, and it landed with all the glory of an early…
