More people opinion about Eat, Pray, Love

The producers of Eat Pray Love, which stars Julia Roberts and is based on a best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, the screen surrogate of the real-life free-lance magazine writer and novelist Elizabeth Gilbert who, in her 2006 memoir of the same title chronicled her trip to Italy, India, and Bali.That is precisely what Liz does, and Eat Pray Love’s remaining two hours are split fairly evenly between her time in Italy, where she indulges in good food, wine, and conversation with a group of attractive (or at least eclectic) Europeans; India, where she joins an ashram and tries to learn the arts of meditation and self-sacrifice; and ultimately Bali, where she submits herself to the tutelage of a cutesy-old medicine man who predicted more than a year earlier that her marriage would end, she would lose all her money, and would come back to him to learn. In Bali she also finds love again, this time with Javier Bardem’s hunky Brazilian divorcee Felipe, who is still nursing his own romantic wounds after more than a decade. She undergoes a tough divorce, begins and ends a rebound affair, and escapes a bad case of the blues by sampling the gustatory and spiritual gifts of Italy, India, and Bali. She looks for her inner self by moving around and reaching out. She wants God, whom she talks to now and then; she wants fried zucchini blossoms; and, after some hesitation, she wants sex. The food is shot with all the artistry of a Chef Boyardee TV commercial – close up of plate, fork twirls noodles, Roberts slurps in the noodles and sauce.The “Eat Pray Love” scene is all about external surfaces made to look pretty.But in India, the film feels pulled in two directions as it hits the cliché of an American coming to India on a spiritual journey of self-discovery. It’s hard to take Liz’ stay at an ashram seriously when the whole thing seems like a sham.At the ashram, the film also makes its most offensive move. A young girl Liz meets explains that her parents are forcing her into an arranged marriage. Do you think she would be happy with an arranged marriage? Hell no. She’d be pissed off and complaining like crazy. So to see her react with such nonchalance to this young woman’s dilemma only proves how self-absorbed and dense Liz is. So if Liz’ journey is meant to serve up some feminist triumph, it fails miserably because its focus is so narrow and it’s unwilling to consider the problems of other women.The film also throws a Prince Charming in Liz’ path in the shape of Javier Bardem. He’s sexy, sensitive, and romantic. The problem with this though, is that it makes the film’s ultimate message be that Liz does need a man to complete her. So it seems to go counter to what she is trying to prove, which is that she is complete on her own and all the people who keep telling her that she needs a man are wrong. Granted, many difficult changes were necessary in order to adapt Gilbert’s best-selling memoir to the screen, and in most instances writer-director Ryan Murphy and his co-writer Jennifer Salt chose judiciously. For example, they created real characters for Gilbert’s husband and New York boyfriend (who were but shadowy memories in the book), and they wisely selected the most meaningful interior monologues for Roberts to deliver in voiceover. Unfortunately, the filmmakers totally ignore the book’s light humor—the ironic fusion of Gilbert’s refreshing self-effacement and her sometimes annoying self-aggrandizing.