Janet recommended this movie to me a long time ago, and it finally floated to the top of our Netflix queue. Now I’m recommending it to everybody else.
It’s a Norwegian film (Salmer fra kjøkkenet), and the sort that reviewers call “little:” there aren’t many characters, there isn’t a lot of action (though there is a lot of development), and most of it takes place in one location. The premise is absurd, though for all I know it may really have taken place. The time is 1950, and the Swedish government is doing research on kitchen efficiency. Having studied the Swedish housewife at length and made recommendations toward reducing the number of miles she walks in her kitchen every year, the researchers have turned their attention to the single male. To this end they dispatch a group of observers to the homes of bachelors in Norway. The observer lives in a trailer beside the house and spends his days perched on a tall chair in the kitchen noting every move made by the inhabitant. In order to maintain scientific objectivity, the observer is forbidden to have any interaction at all with his subject. (I told you it was absurd.)
As you might expect, this rule begins to break down fairly quickly, and the result is alternately amusing and touching. Beyond that, the movie becomes a sly commentary on the folly of studying the human person as a scientific specimen. It might serve as an illustration of a remark made by one of the characters in C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength: “You cannot study men; you can only get to know them.”
By the way, the Internet Movie Database gives the literal translation of the title as Psalms from the Kitchen.
Pre-TypePad
Light On Dark Water 
Leave a comment