Katie Wilmouth
RELI 124-08
April 18, 2010
The Chocolate Cure
“Once upon a time, there was a quiet little village in the French countryside, whose people believed in tranquilité- tranquility” (Chocolat). In the movie Chocolat, the inhabitants of the small French village of Lansquenet were anxiously awaiting the start of the Lenten Season, when a strong North Wind blew through their town. Moving with the wind, a mysterious unwed mother named Vianne Rocher and her young daughter Anouk arrived in the village. In the eyes of Lansquenet’s mayor, the Comte de Reynaud, Vianne was immediately deemed objectionable after declining to attend church and opening her store, La Chocolaterie Maya, during the season of Lent. Vianne and her delicious chocolates threatened to entice the villagers to disregard the restrictions of the religious season, a feat the mayor would not allow. Vianne ignored his attempts to drive her away from the village, continued to defy the town’s moral majority, and in turn liberated the spirits of the villagers who consumed her chocolates.
Despite the fact that she is pagan, her unconditional love and acceptance for even the worst offenders, made Vianne the most Christ-like character in the film. This can be seen in her love for the gypsy river rat named Roux, who the rest of the village found to be immoral. With the powerful sensual pleasures that it unleashed, her chocolate acted as a new Communion or Eucharist for Lansquenet’s inhabitants. There was magic in Vianne’s chocolate in a way that she accurately predicted the right combination of candy and counsel to address the villagers deeper hungers. She helped an outcast to escape from her abusive husband, reunited an ailing older woman with her grandson, and encouraged a man to express his secret love for a widow. The villagers became more approachable, honest and alive as a result of the material and spiritual ingestion of Vianne’s chocolate. Vianne knew that the wind still had plans that needed to be satisfied, but seeing the negative affect moving had on Anouk, decided that the wind would have to call upon someone else.
The Comte de Reynaud ruled the political, social, and religious life of the village of Lansquenet. He controlled the village with his own sense of morality that all inhabitants were expected to follow. By rewriting the sermons of the young priest, he used the church as a vehicle to denounce the new “immorality” of people like Vianne, who only wanted to introduce pleasures in the lives of the villagers. The opening of the chocolate store during the season of Lent was especially deplorable to the mayor because of his own struggle with fasting.
Like his predecessors, Reynaud took the view that morality is preserved by resisting change. Instead of encouraging people to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, he believed it was his obligation to decide for them. Reynaud personally attempted to rehabilitate the town wife-beater and organized the community’s boycott against rampant immorality. He considered himself the moral center of the village and yet his preaching is the sort of religious bigotry Jesus spoke out against. Reynaud’s attitude suggests that Jesus is far more concerned with getting people to conform to the rules rather than demonstrating freedom, joy, and acceptance. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors unconditionally no matter who they are or what they do. The character of the mayor is an example of a person who attempts to manipulate Christianity by forcing his personal beliefs on others.
Reynaud underwent a transformation of his own when a midnight attack on Vianne’s store backfired. In his attempt to destroy the chocolate, he unwittingly tasted some and surrendered to his own need for joy. After the Easter Sermon, the mayor no longer thought it was his obligation to rid the village of immorality and maintain tranquility and tradition.
At the end of the movie Chocolat, the young priest named Pere Henri, wrote his Easter Sermon without input from the Comte de Reynaud. He said, “I want to talk about Christ’s humanity, I mean how he lived his life on earth: his kindness, his tolerance. We must measure our goodness, not by what we don’t do, what we deny ourselves, what we resist, or who we exclude. Instead, we should measure ourselves by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include” (Chocolat). How do we measure goodness? One definition for goodness is a quality or character that the Holy Spirit builds into us, and how you can learn to live that way for others as well as yourself. Goodness is love, displaying integrity, honesty and compassion to others and allowing us to do the right thing. It is accepting people no matter who they are or what they have done. Goodness is giving up your seat on the bus to an elderly person or helping a younger sibling with homework they don’t understand. It is simply going out of our way to help those in need.
After analyzing this sermon, I concluded that the movie was trying to prove two points. The first was that religion is too often based on the notion that things we find pleasurable must be wrong. The season of Lent requires us to fast from these pleasurable things, something many Christians struggle with. Chocolat made the point that something as good as chocolate can be good or bad but that decision is up to the individual. The movie is trying to teach us that anything that doesn’t cause harm to others or ourselves shouldn’t be considered wrong. The second lesson was that change is not always a bad thing and opening your heart to new people can be life altering. By embracing the unknown, we learn new things that we otherwise would not have understood. Change is goodness in disguise. At first we our unsure of what it will bring, but if we put our faith in Christ, he will never steer us wrong. I believe that the goodness of people is not in restrictions inside a church but in our hearts and in our respect and tolerance for others.
