What Ratatouille gets right about memory, food, and the fragile work of continuity

I recently rewatched Ratatouille with my son. It has been years since I last saw it, and like most parents, I expected a pleasant distraction: bright animation, clever jokes, something to share before bedtime. Instead, one scene stopped me cold.

Near the end of the film, the feared food critic Anton Ego takes a single bite of ratatouille prepared by Remy, the rat chef. The moment is quiet. Then the film cuts backward in time. Ego is suddenly a child again, scraped and shaken after falling off his bike. His mother places a simple dish in front of him. He takes a bite of it. He is comforted. He is home.