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Film
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Kitchen Stories
Long before the reality series The Bachelor, Sweden’s Home Research Institute sent out observers to Norway to monitor kitchen routines of single men.
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
By Annlee Ellingson
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During the post-World War II industrial boom, home econo~mists observed and recorded the activities of house~wives in an effort to design more efficient ways for them to complete household chores. As a result of these findings, the potato peeler and the dish rack were invented, as well as a kitchen layout with workstations modeled after a factory assembly line.
As a Swedish ad for the new ideal kitchen at the time put it, “Instead of a housewife having to walk what is the equivalent of Sweden to the Congo during a year of cooking, she now only needs to walk to northern Italy in order to get food on the table.”
This bit of historical trivia is true, as a perusal of any magazine from the period will attest. Norwegian writer/director/producer Bent Hamer, after stumbling upon books full of such findings at a flea market, decided to take it a step further: What if those same scientists next analyzed the kitchen routines of bachelors? What habits might they discover? And how might they improve their subjects’ lives?
They perhaps wouldn’t have expected to encounter Isak (Joachim Calmeyer), a crusty old coot from the rural farming district of Landstad in Norway. Isak only agrees to participate in the research project because he is promised a horse. He is disappointed to learn, however, that the reward is a toy – a misunderstanding caused by a quirk in the language – but agrees to stay in the study anyway because he gave his word. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to be cooperative.
The scientist unlucky enough to be paired with this unwilling participant is Folke (Tomas Norstrom), who parks an egg-shaped, avocado-green camper outside Isak’s house. The rules: The observer must be allowed to come and go as they please; they must not be spoken to; and they must not help with the observed’s daily chores. Folke will take notes from a bird’s-eye perch atop a tall chair in the corner of the kitchen.
Isak doesn’t make it easy for him. He leaves the room as soon as Folke enters, turning the light off on his way out. He moves his kitchen to his bedroom upstairs, cooking on a hotplate. And he drills a hole in the floor of his closet so that he can peer down onto the stranger sitting in his kitchen. But Folke is not without a few move of his own: He dons a headlamp so he won’t be left in the dark again.
It’s not until two reels into the movie that the two main characters even speak to each other, using two different languages at that (Norwegian and Swedish). It begins slowly at first: Isak runs out of tobacco, so Folke silently offers some of his, and Isak pours a cup of coffee for his unwelcome guest. Soon these two gents, both lonely and repressed, begin to open up to one another and form a fast friendship that turns Isak’s best friend Grant (Bjorn Floberg) green with envy.
Meanwhile, the inspector for the project is lurking about, threatening Folke with termination should he discover that he’s straying from the scientific guidelines. What’s the big deal, one might wonder? They’re just hanging out. Yet there’s a palpable apprehension that they’ll get caught and their blossoming friendship will have to end.
That a viewer would respond with genuine alarm to such a possibility is a tribute to the substance of both the actors and the material. One would think a Gen X writer from Los Angeles would be too far removed from a couple of curmudgeons from Norway to be moved.
Yet their funny, sweet rituals – Isak doesn’t answer the phone when Grant rings because it’s too expensive, but upon this signal he fetches his shears because he knows Grant’s on his way over for a haircut – could be those of one’s own great uncles. Bachelors, yes, but not without rich lives.
Beneath the charm lies a pointed social commentary. The study in the film represents a precursor to reality television in which voyeurs watch strangers go about their daily lives without having to expose themselves. Folke, though, ultimately gets involved with his subject.
He argues that one can’t learn anything about other people without interacting with them. He wouldn’t have realized without talking to him, for example, that the reason Isak saves the hair from Grant’s trim is that he uses it to repair dolls, a skill he learned during the war in a concentration camp.
Kitchen Stories won the Amanda, Norway’s answer to the Academy Awards, and was the Land of the Midnight Sun’s official selection for the foreign-language Oscar, but the picture didn’t get a nod. Perhaps a tender story about two old men is too small a film for international recognition. It’s themes, though, are universal: the power of the human bond.
Editor’s Note: Kitchen Stories opened in limited release February 20th and will continue to roll out across the country through April. In the next few weeks for example, it will expand to Washington D.C., Baltimore, Las Vegas, Portland and Seattle.
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