Food and Film

This series combines classic films with lecture and discussion and then caps off each session with a meal. Join fellow Osher members for some food on film and on the table, as well as lively discussion.

• October 18, Eat Drink Man Woman...lunch at P.F. Chang's China Bistro, 98 S. Second, San José. As the relationships evolve and deepen, there seems to be a surprise around every corner--for both the characters and the audience. But what is most surprising, perhaps, is how involved we become with these people. As satisfying as food can be, the fullness we feel at the end here is far richer and more complex than that offered by the most extravagant meal. Eat Drink Man Woman is a delicacy but also something more--something like food for the heart. --Washington Post Review

Senior master chef Chu lives in a large house in Taipei with his three unmarried daughters, Jia-Jen, a chemistry teacher converted to Christianity, Jia-Chien, an airline executive and Jia-Ning, a student who also works in a fast food restaurant. Life in the house evolves around the ritual of an elaborate dinner each Sunday and the love lives of all the family members.

• October 25, Big Night...lunch at La Pastaia, 233 W. Santa Clara, San José.Big Night is one of the great food movies and yet it is so much more. It is about food not as a subject but as a language--the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection. There is a moment in the  movie when a timpano is sliced open, and the audience sighs with simple delight. --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

Primo and Secondo are two brothers who have emigrated from Italy to open an Italian restaurant in America. Primo is the irascible and gifted chef, brilliant in his culinary genius, but determined not to squander his talent on making the routine dishes that customers expect. Secondo is the smooth front-man, trying to keep the restaurant financially afloat, despite few patrons other than a poor artist who pays with his paintings. The owner of the nearby Pascal's restaurant, enormously successful (despite its mediocre fare), offers a solution--he will call his friend, a big-time jazz musician, to play as special benefit at their restaurant. Primo begins to prepare his masterpiece, a feast of a lifetime, for the brothers' big night.

• November 8, What's Cooking?...potluck lunch. The movie, for the most part, breathes new life into its secondhand premise. The issue of race, ethnicity and sexuality that percolate through it are handled with a light, humorous touch. The fact that the pilgrims helped to found a nation of people from every corner of the globe who frenetically mix in our contemporary cities is less the film's point than its premise. It's a meal you may feel you've eaten before, but you nonetheless walk away stuffed and happy. -- New York Times review

In LA's Fairfax district, where ethnic groups abound, four households celebrate Thanksgiving amidst family tensions. In the Nguyen family, the children's acculturation and immigrant parents' fears collide. In the Avila family, Isabel's son has invited her estranged husband to their family dinner. Audrey and Ron Williams want to keep their own family's ruptures secret from Ron's visiting mother. In the Seelig household, Herb and Ruth are unwilling to discuss openly their grown daughter's living with her lover, Carla. Around each table, things come to a head. A gun, an affair, a boyfriend and a pregnancy precipitate crises forcing each family to find its center.

*After the first two movies, lecture and discussion, the group will adjourn to the restaurant listed. Every person will select from the menu and pay their own bill. For the final session, the group will have a potluck thanksgiving dinner. Each student will bring a dish. More information and potluck sign up sheet will be available at the first class session.

Roger Johnson taught well-received courses on Citizen Kane and Scorsese on Film for the Osher Institute. He received his degrees in Chemical Engineering (B.S., M.S. and PhD) from UC Davis and Stanford. He has been a film buff his whole life, probably averaging a couple of movies a week most of his 60 years. Among Johnson's favorite films are Schindler's List, The Godfather I and II, Dances with Wolves and Dr. Strangelove. Johnson is an OLLI@SJSU member and volunteers his time to lead this course.