Noma: My Perfect Storm Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Noma: My Perfect Storm Blu-ray Movie Review

Cuisine as Art

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 28, 2016

Anyone who regularly watches the Food Channel will want to see Noma: My Perfect Storm, the first feature-length film by French documentarian Pierre Deschamps. Even if you know nothing about "Nordic cuisine" or the Copenhagen restaurant where it was born, Noma has the requisite conflict, colorful personalities and the luscious photography of ornate cuisine that have made celebrity chefs a staple of reality TV.

The star of Noma is René Redzepi, the son of a Danish mother and an immigrant father from Macedonia (part of the former Yugoslavia). In 2004, Redzepi opened Noma in partnership with cuisine author and TV personality Claus Meyer, where he began to create new dishes based on indigenous ingredients from Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland. Dubbed "Nordic cuisine", Redzepi's creations propelled Noma to international recognition, earning the accolade of "best restaurant in the world" from Restaurant magazine three years in a row.

The first half of Deschamps' film explores Noma's history and Redzepi's approach to cooking, but the second half traces Noma's fall from grace, when it lost its "best restaurant" ranking in 2013 following an outbreak of food-borne illness. Under Redzepi's determined leadership, the kitchen fights its way back to the top.

Redzepi is a temperamental character, and Noma includes numerous instances of him haranguing his staff in a manner that will be familiar to anyone who has watched the antics of Gordon Ramsay. But Deschamps is equally interested in capturing Redzepi in private moments, like a scene where he prepares breakfast with his daughter. In this restless creative talent who seems to have been caught by surprise at his own success, Deschamps sees a new breed of chef. "I like the idea that René Redzepi represents the antithesis of a feudal culinary system", says Deschamps, "in his embodiment of the possibility that a young man who comes from nothing can break with tradition and the age-old stereotypes passed down through the generations by such old gastronomic titans as France and Italy."

Noma: My Perfect Storm Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Deschamps served as his own cinematographer on Noma: My Perfect Storm, which was shot on a Red Epic Mysterium-X (according to IMDb). Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presents the film with the clean and detailed image free of distortion or interference that is customary with digital capture. The colors are realistic, and Redzepi's culinary creations are featured in all their vivid hues. Magnolia has mastered the film with an average bitrate of 16.99 Mbps, but that figure is deceptively low, because the film contains so many scenes with little or no motion. When the imagery demands more bandwidth, the bitrate spikes upward.

Noma: My Perfect Storm Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Noma's DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack clearly reproduces the film's interviews and dialogue, almost all of which is in English. The few interviewees who speak in other languages are subtitled. The expressive score by Frans Bak and Keld Haaning Ibsen, who scored the original Danish version of The Killing, makes good use of the surround array to create an enveloping mood.

Noma: My Perfect Storm Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.35:1; 10:44).
• René Redzepi Coming to Noma
• The Butter Maker Family
• The Eggs



• Testing the Menu (1080p; 1.85:1; 20:51).
• Fermented Gooseberries
• Kohlrabi in Kohlrabi
• Flat Bread with Grilled Roses
• Making Flat Bread with Grilled Roses



• Noma Cuisine Gallery (1080p; various; 2:42).



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:02).



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, Sunshine Superman, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun Jiro Dreams of Sushi, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live produces the message "Check back for updates".

Noma: My Perfect Storm Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Even foodies who may be skeptical about "Nordic cuisine" should find Noma intriguing. The technical quality of Magnolia's disc can't be faulted.