Movies and Philosophy Now: Chef and the Ingredients for Living a Good Life

by Christopher Barr

“By endeavour, diligence, discipline and self-mastery, let the wise person make (of himself) an island that no flood can overwhelm.”

- Buddha

“Choose a job that you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

- Confucius

Chef was a wonderfully organic film about finding what it truly is that makes you happy, even if you have to go back to the start to find it. It’s a film that explores the spirit and joy of fulfillment not only for yourself but what you bring to others as a result. In philosophical terms, the film is influenced by the eastern philosophers more so than the western.

The former asks one to find passion in the world and then let it spill into their life, it wants one to see life as all there is. As a result, it wants one to make the best out of what they have in the world, for when it is over - it is gone. This form of philosophy is not a component of religion; in fact religion has no place in this form of epiphanious understanding. Religion descends the individual and creates an illusion of ascension, that’s how it holds its many levels of control over its blind flocks. Eastern philosophy only asks that you open your eyes, elevate your spirit and enjoy the true fruits that life has to offer.

Chef is about a man named Chef Carl Casper that is living under the illusion of freedom. He works in a Los Angles restaurant where he runs the kitchen with his own staff of cooks. When a prestigious food critic and blogger comes by the restaurant and later gives the Chef a bad review, the battle begins. Carl wanted to do a special menu of his own inspired design but is told that he must stick to the restaurant's trite dinner menu. As a result a Twitter battle begins between Carl and the food critic while in the company of their thousands of Twitter followers. Needless to the say the event goes viral and Carl comes out looking distasteful and unprofessional.

During a low point in Carl’s downfall of despair, he quits his job and creates a public scene when he scolds the critic in the restaurant. This also goes viral (with video) and further embarrasses Carl, alienating him from his profession as he loses credibility and future job possibilities.

The film is about a man that has reached the end of his rope and is forced to break protocol and question his reality. He feels that there is something not quite right with his life and begins to long for restoration to his better self. The fear of being ostracized and being alone sets in, this creates a sense of impotence in the face of our anger and over-sized ambitions, bringing us to our first sincere philosophical question; What am I going to do to live a more fulfilling life?

Cruelty, bodily discomfort, injustice, illness, indignities, annoyances and various levels of inconveniences are the prosaic facts of any given day. So the question is; what are we going to do about this, how are we going to live our lives, in a hopeful pleasant place, while the pain and suffering of the outside world forges on all around us? One must live an ennobled life rather than succumbing to the despairing numbness, where most drone along in emptiness, and suffer from a banal, uncontrolled form of tedium.

Carl needs to realize how to effectively meet the everyday challenges of daily life, while dealing with the inevitable major losses, disappointments, griefs and fears. Here he must learn to think clearly about his life while performing his duties as a Chef, as a father, and as a person. He needs to collect the courage for self-refection and not get stuck in a pit of despair.

Carl decides to take a trip with his ex-wife Inez and their son Percy, to Miami. He does this to get away from the chaos of his current choices in life and for him to establish a better relationship with his son. Quite reluctantly at first, Carl accepts a beaten-down food truck from Inez’s other ex-husband. He does this to try to reconnect himself and get back to his culinary passion. He and Percy restore the truck and with his previous cook from the restaurant in L.A, Martin, they sell Cubanos from it, which are a delicious form of Cuban sandwich. They drive the truck from Miami back to Los Angles and along the way they stop in various cities and sell Cubanos, most notably, New Orleans and Austin, Texas.

Living the good life requires a number of ingredients in order for it to be truly fulfilling. Examining one’s life takes courage but the result is always worth it. Carl looked at what he had in his life and realized that it wasn’t that bad but he needed changes in it. To be human is to think and that’s what’s required for enlightenment. Carl started to only worry about the things that he had control over and stopped trying to control things that he didn't. He whittled his life back so he could truly see the value of being a father to such an inspired son. He began to see his ex-wife differently as well, appreciating her more.

He went back to his roots, the place he was when he first fell in love with cooking. He began to re-master himself by taking back what it all meant to him in the first place. He went from working in a big fancy restaurant, where chaos was the air you breathed to a food truck, with a controlled space which became more conducive to the chaos. There he began to live the honest life, under his terms while simultaneously making others around him, his son Percy and his friend Martin, happy. This trip they all took was a journey to understanding, that life is just as much about the little things as it is about the big ones.

The good life is like a well prepared dish, it requires passion and love, it requires freshly cut vegetables simmering in a frying pan with garlic, pesto and extra-virgin olive oil, it requires all the right amounts of seasoning and a beautifully marbled Rib-eye, grilled to perfection. It requires the right bottle of red wine, a Bordeaux perhaps and it requires a brief amount of meditation, a breath before you take the first savory bite.