“Anyone can cook.” That’s how Ratatouille begins and ends, but it’s not really a movie about food. It’s a movie about possibility. About breaking molds. About what happens when you let your desire be stronger than your destiny. And yes: it’s also a movie about rats. But, above all, about dreams that make their way, even through the cracks of a system that tells you no.
Remy is a mouse, an outcast even within his own colony because he has a more refined palate and a different view of the world. From a developmental psychology perspective, we could understand Remy as a subject in search of individuation, that process described by Carl Jung in which the self differentiates itself from the collective to assert itself as an autonomous and creative identity.
Remy doesn’t want to eat junk. He wants to create. He wants to feel. It’s not enough to survive. He wants to live, and living involves choosing. This puts him in constant tension with his environment, which represents security, tradition, the «that’s the way things are.» Instead, Remy chooses the path of art. Because yes: cooking, here, is art. It’s sensitivity. It’s expression.
Ratatouille also represents the figure of the «ideal self» (Rogers), that internal model that guides our actions toward what we would like to be. For Remy, that ideal is Gusteau, the dead chef turned into an inner conscience. A voice that accompanies him, that reminds him that it’s possible. To dream. To never give up. That even as a rat, he can aspire to excellence.
The bond with Linguini, that clumsy human who can’t even fry an egg, functions as a metaphor for the synergy between the instinctive and the structured, between passion and form. Together they cook not because they are perfect, but because they learn to trust. From a Vygotskian perspective, we could say that Linguini is the cultural mediator that allows Remy to transition from internal thought to social language. And vice versa.
The kitchen, rigid, hierarchical, and hostile, represents the adult world: that space where creativity is often repressed by the fear of error. But Remy breaks through with flavor. His final ratatouille—that humble, peasant, unpretentious dish—is the masterstroke: because it moves, because it connects, because it says «this is me.»
And here appears one of the most beautiful moments from the perspective of emotional psychology: the scene in which Anton Ego, the feared critic, tastes the dish and is emotionally transported back to his childhood. That sudden connection with an early memory, evoked by flavor, is a clear example of the phenomenon of episodic memory and the power of the senses as an activator of affective memories. A stimulus that, as Proust would say, restores lost time. Ego, who represents cold reason, eventually surrenders to emotional authenticity.
And of course, Ratatouille also has its «cookie crisis.» Or rather: its «hat crisis.» When it’s revealed that the cook is a rat, everything collapses. The system doesn’t accept anything different. Talent, if it comes from an unexpected place, is discarded. But the film insists: value doesn’t depend on packaging. It depends on dedication, intention, passion.
And so, Ratatouille becomes a vital lesson for children and adults alike. It tells us: it doesn’t matter where you come from. What matters is what you have inside. What matters is what you do with it. Because anyone can cook. Anyone can create. But only those who dare to be true to themselves… manage to move.
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