{"id":2948,"date":"2007-06-29T21:33:23","date_gmt":"2007-06-29T21:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2948"},"modified":"2007-06-29T21:33:23","modified_gmt":"2007-06-29T21:33:23","slug":"ratatouille_sim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2948","title":{"rendered":"Ratatouille, Simply Brilliant"},"content":{"rendered":"


A.O. Scott<\/a>: <\/p>\n

The moral of \u201cRatatouille\u201d is delivered by a critic: a gaunt, unsmiling fellow named Anton Ego who composes his acidic notices in a coffin-shaped room and who speaks in the parched baritone of Peter O\u2019Toole. \u201cNot everyone can be a great artist,\u201d Mr. Ego muses. \u201cBut a great artist can come from anywhere.\u201d
\nQuite so. Written and directed by Brad Bird and displaying the usual meticulousness associated with the Pixar brand, \u201cRatatouille\u201d is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised.
\nIts sensibility, implicit in Mr. Ego\u2019s aphorism, is both exuberantly democratic and unabashedly elitist, defending good taste and aesthetic accomplishment not as snobbish entitlements but as universal ideals. Like \u201cThe Incredibles,\u201d Mr. Bird\u2019s earlier film for Pixar, \u201cRatatouille\u201d celebrates the passionate, sometimes aggressive pursuit of excellence, an impulse it also exemplifies.
\nThe hero (and perhaps Mr. Bird\u2019s alter ego) is Remy (Patton Oswalt), a young rat who lives somewhere in the French countryside and conceives a passion for fine cooking. Raised by garbage-eaters, he is drawn toward a more exalted notion of food by the sensitivity of his own palate and by the example of Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett), a famous chef who insists \u2014 more in the manner of Julia Child than of his real-life haute cuisine counterparts \u2014 that \u201canyone can cook.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was impressed with this film on many levels, especially the incredible attention to details. Bird’s framing of Ego was superb. Go! Brad Bird<\/a> directs (he also lead the Incredibles).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A.O. Scott: The moral of \u201cRatatouille\u201d is delivered by a critic: a gaunt, unsmiling fellow named Anton Ego who composes his acidic notices in a coffin-shaped room and who speaks in the parched baritone of Peter O\u2019Toole. \u201cNot everyone can be a great artist,\u201d Mr. Ego muses. \u201cBut a great artist can come from anywhere.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}