Movie Review - Eat, Pray, Love

OK, I’ll admit it up-front: I loved the book. Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey inspired me as she set off to Italy, India, and Bali to discover herself and God, while escaping from the life she’d willingly made with her husband in the box store-loving suburbs. My son was a few years old when I read it. Some days, while reading the book, the travel bug hit so hard I would find myself with my hand on my heart, nearly gasping for breath as I pushed my little guy on the swing in our fenced back yard. I just wanted to sell the house and travel the world with my family. And visit an ashram. In addition to traveling and eating the world’s best pizza, Gilbert was earnestly fumbling toward finding a sustainable connection to God. One of my favorite passages was when she finally broke through her inability to meditate, and basically experienced what it was like to be in the hand of God.

When the movie was announced with Julia Roberts playing Gilbert, I wondered how they could make such an internal journey - though admittedly with beautiful backdrops – into a movie. The answer is that they took the book, and made a movie trying to please the masses, a-la Sex in the City. When I entered the movie theater, the employees were wearing shirts with “Eat Pray Love” on the back, with quotes such as “I’m having an affair with my pizza” written on the front. A sticker on the ice cream window said, “You don’t need a man, you need a Champion! – Eat, Pray, Love.” And buy ice cream.

Though Roberts was great, and really got Gilbert’s personality and spirit, the movie felt long and incongruous as it tried to incorporate the different components of her journey. Perhaps expectedly, it ended up being a Cliff’s Notes version, without the depth of the book. Gilbert’s torment and depression pre-and post-divorce were barely touched on, save her mentioning she didn’t want to be married, and joking with her friend about Xanax. Instead of sobbing on the cold tile in the bathroom night after night, instead she can’t sleep and decides to kneel on the bathroom floor and say an introductory prayer to God. If you weren’t already there sobbing your soul out, why would you choose the bathroom floor to pray?

In Italy, the scenes of Roberts eating into a supposedly larger jean size were beautiful. I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and that was a mistake. I could have tried every one of the dishes she ordered, along with the wine and gelato. My stomach rumbles just thinking about it. But again, the depth of her getting off anti-depressants, and the irony of declaring a year of celibacy and then hearing the nightly romps of her high-heeled upstairs neighbor, was lost. And, speaking of jeans, she and her Swedish friend Sofie decide to buy bigger jeans instead of worrying about their waistlines, but then are shown in a store trying to button some obviously too-small jeans onto their small bodies, and then cheering when they get them on. I thought the idea was to buy bigger jeans to avoid the muffin top and keep eating pasta. The movie got this part so wrong, I had to read to my husband, who came with me to the movie, the Naples and jeans-buying chapters just to set the record straight. What was missing here was Gilbert’s self-effacing humor and descriptions.

India and Bali, similar to Italy, had many of the components of the original story, but skimmed the surface. Her time in God’s palm, the highlight of her Ashram stay, was skipped. Richard from Texas had so many good lines to use in a short amount of time, that he seemed to be a walking one-liner. Ketut the medicine man was sweet, but the complications of trying to buy Wayan a house were omitted. Her meeting and falling in love with Felipe felt contrived, and all the wonderful sex they had was left to one’s imagination as they closed the swinging doors behind them on their way into the bedroom, and let the PG-13 rating stand.

Overall, I think it could have made a better mini-series than trying to fit it into a 133-minute film. I’m glad I saw it, but I could have waited for Netflix.

Man On Wire

When the French tightrope-walking Philippe Petit broke through security in the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, it was to create an act of rebellion, and of beauty. Although extremely self-focused (and what artist- and I put myself in this category- isn't really?) he had a band of friends and acquaintances who helped him to pull off the unimaginable task of stringing a heavy tightrope wire across the two towers and securing it so that he could walk across or "dance" as a police officer later described it in awe.

I thought I would come away from the documentary about this event, "Man on Wire," inspired to create, but Petit's change after his success soured me a bit. What struck me, however, besides his drive to want to tightrope walk a quarter of a mile off the ground with no safety net, was the story of the World Trade Center's birth.

Petit knew he wanted to walk across the towers before they were even built.

It almost feels like a sacrilege to admit this, but before 9/11 I had no fondness for the towers. Yes, I knew they were tall, but aside from that I hadn't give them much thought. But to hear the story from Petit and his friends and to see the early footage of the buildings, I felt that I was part of the historic erecting of the towers. One scene, hauntingly familiar to the ground zero footage, was of the very beginning of the building. I suddenly missed the towers as if they were old friends.

Trying to digest the movie afterwards, part of me wondered, as if critiquing my own personal essay, "What was the point of the story?"

This was the same question everyone asked Petit after his tightrope walk- "Why did you do it? What was the point?"

He thought this was an amusingly American point of view.

There was no point, he just felt he had to do it.

That I could identify with.

Once

My sister recommended the movie “Once.”

It took my husband and me about three months to see it, meanwhile paying Netflix for the privilege of having it sit atop our television. When we finally took the time to see it, I was struck by the movie’s simplicity.

It’s about an aspiring musician with a broken heart trying to start a music career, and a Czech immigrant making her way in Ireland. What touched me were how these two people, who had so little monetarily, were truly living their lives and pursuing their dreams in a simple, yet profound way.

It made me think about how much I have, and how I should try to live life fully in the now, instead of waiting for more. I often think, mostly unconsciously,

ONCE

My kids grow up;

We win the lottery;

I have a successful book published;

I appear on Oprah;

We live abroad for a year --

THEN,I’ll be happy.

I wait for these things today.

Not so long ago, I wanted to find love, get married, have children, and buy a house. I have all of that now, yet, the credits never rolled along with a moving soundtrack in the background when I got what I thought I wanted most.

I always find new things to covet.

I think it’s part of the human experience to yearn for more. As I start to feel the hunger pains for a future different than my present, I pause.

I try to notice one thing that I’m enjoying now. Today, it was my boys jumping and splashing in the little blow-up pool in our backyard. Yesterday, it was my youngest son “stealing” strawberries off the counter faster than I could cut them up.

I continue to have an insatiable craving for something new, different, more, than what I already have.

Perhaps one day I will find happiness and contentment in the present; aware that everything I have is already a gift.