Selfishness
and vacuousness as feminist manifesto? Is this what the female species
has come to? According to Eat Pray Love, it may not be the entire
gender, just the ones who can afford to jet set across the globe to
their heart’s content without a care as to the ruined lives left their
wake on their all-important quest for self-fulfillment.
Based on the bestselling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love is a
misfired attempt at chick flick epiphany. Screenwriter/director Ryan
Murphy seems clueless as to how incredibly unlikable and unrelatable his
main character is. Liz is a woman who has it all, yet for some unknown
reason is never happy. We’re meant to follow her journey as she tries
to find some mythical inner contentment she imagines herself deprived
of. Lo and behold, after she calmly destroys one marriage to a decent,
good looking bloke, then immediately after makes herself miserable in
another relationship with a perfectly nice, even better looking gent; it
becomes plain our alleged heroine’s inner peace lies in finding a third
gorgeous fella to regale her with tales about how wonderful she is.
This left me to wonder if Liz’s middle name was Bella or Mary Sue? Why
is Liz so sad? Nobody knows and we’re not going to find out in this two
hour plus epic. But she’s adamant she’s got to go somewhere and do
something; so off she flies to immerse herself in all things Roman,
particularly the carbohydrates. Once she’s done the unimaginable and
ordered a meal in passable Italian and even more shockingly learns to
embrace that she can be happy as a size three as well as a size zero,
she packs up off to India for further pursuit of the whole inner peace
thing (And an easy way to get back into those Banana Republic sizes
again.).
Not that her journey to a famous guru’s ashram was even
Liz’s idea; nope, she latched on to this theory because of the cute
actor boy who was a serious devotee. Because of all the (self-inflicted)
chaos in her terribly tortured soul, Liz can’t calm herself enough for
this miracle cure to take place. After meeting people at the ashram who
have it much rougher than she; like the young Indian girl facing an
arranged marriage she can’t escape and a fellow American expat running
from being a bad father, she feels better about herself and hies herself
off to Bali where her whole journey started. She happily bicycles along
the rice paddies and around town between shifts spent searching for some
unnamed wisdom at the knee of a toothless old medicine man she met years
before on a reporting assignment (Where she only asked about herself.).
She’s even shady in her agreement to help the elderly shaman who asks
her help in preserving centuries of priceless spiritual treasures and
tracts: Not one to do anything the long way, Liz nicks over to the
Balinese Kinko’s when she’s meant to be copying the wise man’s notes by
hand. In the midst of the cheap vacation rentals and beautiful views,
she finds her own stunning vista in a woeful single father, who of
course teaches Liz how to love again. Not being aware that Liz didn’t
know how to love in the first place, as she seemed to really adore
herself, this didn’t seem like much of a challenge.
The purported life lessons in Eat Pray Love are so shallow and
unsatisfying I doubt they would pass muster on Oxygen or the Lifetime
for Women TV channels (Though I did keep expecting to hear the Mighty
Oprah’s booming voiceover narration as a bookend.).
Compared to the
cellophane-flimsy journey of self-discovery in this film, the wisdom
found in your basic fortune cookie has the depth to perplex
philosophers. Liz’s unlimited cash flow shows that she is an extremely
successful writer while her first hubby is a bit of a dreamer. Guess
what, lady? He was like that when you met him. He seems like a supportive and
terribly loving chap, but enough’s enough and Liz wants out. No couples
therapy, no discussion, no consideration for the bonds of marriage, just
see ya. When she flirts with and traps a gorgeous young actor - one
entranced enough to wash and fold her dirty skivvies and looks exactly
like James Franco - she’s not happy either and would rather cry all
night on the floor than actually be an adult and talk to him about
what’s wrong. Oy...
When Liz gets to Italy, all her new friends are so
charmed by her that they can’t understand why she’s not married, but
being such a radiant, precious gem it’s all okay; they love her for who
she is. She seems to take not a drop of perspective or self knowledge
away from India or her time with the Balinese medicine man.
The movie
makes a case that’s just not there and Liz’s misery is a vacuum
premise. There’s no reason for this attractive, rich American to not be
happy, certainly not that we’re ever shown in Eat Pray Love. In this
era of turmoil and continuous bad news where people lose their jobs and
their homes daily, children are starving and there’s wars in the world,
I’m supposed to care that this shallow, self-absorbed, flighty woman
feels a little sad?
Liz, I could’ve saved you the airfare with one
word: Prozac.
Star Julia Roberts is fairly charming with not a lot to do other than
eat Italian food and be adored by a bevy of gorgeous men. Tough work,
that. I would have liked to see more of James Franco as the younger (-
and wiser) man in Liz’s life who tries so hard to please her and
Billy Crudup is a bittersweet chuckle as the pathetic future-ex-hubby
who doesn’t understand what went wrong. Don’t worry Billy, neither do
we. Javier Bardem’s shaggy subtle highlights flatter his very large
cranium and help him appear as romantic and appealing as he’s allowed to
be despite an unimaginative script that’s neither sustainably humourous
nor compelling. Richard Jenkins is the wounded Texan hiding in the
Indian temple for a decade who feels some inexplicable reason to
unburden himself and his whole sorry saga to Liz. This is mystifying
because there’s only one instance where Liz ever does anything genuinely
compassionate for anyone else in the entire screenplay and even that
turned my eye to the side considering the amount of dosh she’d spent on
herself. There’s also a regrettably limited use of the brilliant Viola
Davis as Liz’s friend and agent, who like the rest of the audience has
no clue what Liz’s problem is and has no trouble informing her so.
I suspect that had Ms. Davis's character remained onscreen any longer,
the picture might have been much shorter.
Regardless of its
marquee names, the real star of Eat Pray Love is its gorgeous camerawork
and locations. Cinematographer Robert Richardson captures Italy in all
its textured, musky sensuality. We don’t see as much of India as I
would have liked through Richardson’s lens, but Bali should expect a ton
of visitors with the luscious green hillsides and nighttime bacchanals
shown here. Truly, the visuals were the only real moments of interest
for the entire venture; otherwise at nearly two and a half hours, Eat
Pray Love is an endurance test that would be a dealbreaker for any date
night movie.
Eat Pray Love is a failed feminist declaration that few women in the
audience could ever relate to. If what we were seeing was true equality
between the sexes; would we be expected to cheer if Liz’s selfish
actions were undertaken by a man? Flouncing out of a marriage for no
apparent reason, then carrying on an affair with a young actress (In
an inferior financial situation, as was the husband.) before the
divorce to the crying, traumatised ex-spouse is even signed; then
screwing with the new lover’s life only to blithely fly off to eat his
way across Italy and play at enlightenment in India until Ms. Right
pursues him in Bali? No we wouldn’t. We’d be throwing shoes at the
screen and hissing what a cad this guy was. Why should the reaction be
different when portrayed by Julia Roberts’ debatable charms?
If this is
what passes for female empowerment these days, leave me out of it.
~ The Lady Miz Diva
Aug 12th, 2010
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