Generally speaking, I like watching chick flicks about as much as I like getting hives. I can’t stand the Disney-ified perspective on relationships or cheesy, girl power soundtracks. I imagined Eat, Pray, Love would be particularly loathsome, mostly because I have trouble feeling much empathy for a perfect, blonde, fabulously successful writer who has the financial means to decide life lacks color, and thus travel the world eating pasta, meditating with gurus and making love with Javier Bardem.
When I high-tailed it to Spain after my own divorce, I had five hundred dollars in my pocket. Rather than doing yoga and discovering Neapolitan pizza, I busted my backside running around Madrid teaching English. And I had no guru to turn to when the pain of life hit. I had sangria.
When my girlfriends forced me to watch Eat, Pray this past weekend, I was ready to do some serious hatin’ on Julia and her mawkish little film. But then something happened. I got inspired. Weepy. I kinda liked the damn thing.
Lots of it was ridiculous – the hokey self-help dialogue, the silly flashbacks, the fact that Javier Bardem didn’t take his shirt off enough. But if you want to know what the big whoop is about this book and film, allow me to summarize.
Life Requires a Sense of Wonder
Our heroine took her trip because she wanted to “marvel” at existence, a feeling many people share. Everyone I know right now feels they’re trudging through life. Their jobs, relationships, or lack thereof, have them asking “is this all there is? Am I not destined for greater things?” As a starving artist in Europe, I experienced a near constant sense of wonder brought on by the newness of my surroundings and challenge to define myself in them. This was the essence of life: enchantment, meaning, but also hard work.
I tell my friends, “this isn’t all there is, and yes, you are destined for greater things.” Still, how do you get those things if you aren’t a New Yorker writer with a giantass bank account?
You are Not Your Work
My mom suggests I go back to school to become a teacher, a friend tells me about a crummy desk job available and my whiny response is always, “but I’m a writer,” the implication being I’m incapable of doing or being anything else.
So it was kinda weird to hear the protagonist in the movie sob, “but I’m a writer” then have her friend insist that’s not “who” she is. In the US, whether we’re artists, academics or CEOs, we let our work define us. What if we’re wrong? If my identity is not “writer,” what is it?
Goddamn, Julia Roberts.
The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
Eat, Pray introduced an Italian concept called “the sweetness of doing nothing.” I think we should import it. Life is filled with too much. Some slowness and nothingness would be grand.
Italians are the kind of folks who take two hours to eat lunch everyday. When I first moved to Europe, I felt this agonizing sense of futility sitting at a table trying to find a way to make lunch interesting and productive for two hours. But then I got the hang of it and enjoyed every bite of food, every sip of wine, every lull in the conversation.
I personally can’t stand getting to the end of the work week and looking back at the blur. This is my life, for cripe’s sake. I want to experience every second.
Don’t Be Afraid of Love
The reason I despise chick flicks is because the people in them who are afraid of love always have some dumb epiphany, run manically through the streets to their beloved, then make some saccharine statement about the importance of love before dashing off into the sunset.
That shit never happens in real life.
Most people with love fears don’t arrive on their beloved’s doorstep, bouquet in hand, saying, “I’m ready to love again.” But if there’s any truth to take from this flick, it’s that love, despite everything that blows about it, is what makes all the trials, tribulations and triumphs of life’s journey worth it.
i dubbed this book and film “the trials and tribulations of a whiny white woman.” i was disgusted with her from the very beginning. successful blonde woman living the idyll and suddenly she’s unhappy?
bitch, please.
the only morsel of true worth i found in that book was when she was in india (i believe) talking to the drunk texan and he told her that there wasn’t really such a thing as soulmates.
other than that, i can’t even say i’ll be illegally downloading this movie, never mind paying good money to see it.
i love james franco. i even love la julia, but i think this is one of many other chick-flicks that i will have to pass up. i liked your summary/take on it, though, and have to say, it almost redeemed the whole EPL phenomenon for me.
almost.
oh! and let us NOT forget the yummy javier bardem. ayoye!
I was forced to read the book. (Social pressure. By a woman – which I suppose should be obvious). Kind of liked it, actually – despite the best of intentions.
However, y’all will pardon me if I sit out the movie, OK? I like having a man card and would really rather keep it.
Wolfshades and Dalia, you both will be pardoned for sitting this one out! I completely understand.
“the sweetness of doing nothing” concept is similar to the french idea of “flanerie”. i need to do this more often. i strolled around the city by myself the other week after a particularly stressful workday, watching people and the beautiful sunset with nowhere in particular i needed to be. it was quite a nice change…
Nice piece, but I think it passes on a common misconception that Gilbert could take the trip because she was privileged. In fact, she’s a working writer with an impressive track record who took her trip after submitting a successful proposal to a publishing company. So the trip was part of her work–the kind of work a lot of us might envy, but work nonetheless.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I read the book. I studiously avoids “chick-lit” (please pardon my use of that term) but a co-worker I talk about books with, and whose judgement I trust, suggested that I read it and loaned me her copy. I found it honest, funny and thought-provoking. And a lot of the criticism of the book strikes me as class prejudice–as if the fact that she’s a “privileged white woman” is in itself enough reason to diss the book. I wonder how certain folks would react if people slammed “Precious” because it was written by “some ghetto chick.”
I’m and African-American man, BTW