Chocolate (2000), Movie Review Example

Chocolate has always been noted as one of the most common comfort food that humans run to when they are feeling depressed or unhappy. It could not be denied that this theme has been used successfully in the film Chocolat, which was released in the year 2000. This American-British movie presents a young woman who tries to escape life’s hardest times through going to a quite foreign village in France with her daughter. Nominated for five academy awards, the movie captures the essence of comfort that one needs to survive life’s most uncanny situations that result to determinable courses of pressure. Practically, the movie tends to show the concept of relaxation, the break that one needs to be able to face life’s most disquieting problems.

The story’s plot revolves around the idea that people tend to become overtly affected by life and are drained into the events that directly affect them. Considerably, gaining a break from every pressuring point in life gives one a better perspective of herself and that of the others surrounding her. Taking the character of Vianne Rocher, the protagonist of the movie, it could be analyzed that she has become the glue that connected people who have gone separate ways in years through the chocolate store she has established in the village.

Among those who were directly enchanted by her chocolate selections was her landlady, Armande. Although Vianne’s personality did not match the characteristics of the traditional village she chose to settle in, her attitude towards life and towards the people surrounding her. Her positive attitude towards life and the willingness she has to change what has become of her life in the past has attracted people to draw closer to her. Being a woman who wants more out of life, she desired to become the glue that helps others to stick together; getting individuals who have fallen apart through time to find a point of reconnection. Her chocolate creations serve more than just the comfort of being able to taste the sweetness of the chocolate itself, but the comfort of being relatively connected to another person due to the commonality that the chocolate serves brings more meaning to the relationships formed in Vianne’s chocolate shop.

In this movie, the protagonist and all the other characters reflect one or more distinct identification of what life’s adversities could do to a person. Notably, the indication of loss due to the pressures that life has imposed caused some of the people in the village to become more concerned about themselves and less about those people whom they loved. The supposed conservative attitude of the people has kept them away from realizing the realities of emotions that they are supposed to feel. Aiming to remain within the constraints of the society’s norms, some individuals in the village kept within themselves what they felt to avoid being ridiculed. Their desire to be accepted is much more important for them than that of their desire to live life to its fullest. The existence of Vianne and her shop in the village intended to change this situation and opened more doors for the people to become more outgoing and embrace their freedom when it comes to feeling what they want to feel and doing what they have to do.

The chocolate symbolizes the willingness of the people to break free from norms and embrace the freedom that life offers. What makes this movie rather compelling is the fact that it explores the manner by which people become more indulged into the concept of accepting themselves more freely than putting self-limitations due to what the society suggests with regards what is acceptable and what is not. Being confined to these norms and social rules has caused some of the village people to be quite judgmental. This in the movie is the common problem that has been dealt with by the people and Vianne herself. However, with full positive perspective in life, she becomes the source of realization that the people needed to have to understand what they were missing and what more they could do to make life more satisfying.