I haven’t seen the movie. I haven’t read the book. But I hate the premise. I also really hate A. O. Scott’s review. Here’s a rebuttal / rant, of sorts:
… but it can be refreshing, now and then, to see something different in the multiplex: a movie that takes seriously (or for that matter has fun with) a woman’s autonomy, her creativity, her desire for something other than a mate.
Clever moving of the goalpost. The movie is still about a woman’s reaction to a divorce. It’s the divorce, and the lack of a relationship with a man, that spurs her on this ‘journey’. It’s still about men, or the absence thereof, that defines women. I’d love to see a movie that shows authentic travel by women just for the thrill of it. We often see men explorers off in faraway lands and not question their motives – they’re adventurers, after all, seeking whatever it is that men seek. But here, this pretense of a liberating movie puts women and traveling together because a divorce opened her eyes. Ok.
… the film offers an easygoing and generous blend of wish fulfillment, vicarious luxury, wry humor and spiritual uplift…
In other words: what white people want. Or more specifically, what bored, out of their minds corporate zombies want – a virtual escape from their dead end lives.
So many people in this world confront much graver threats to their well-being: violence, poverty, oppression. This woman has nothing but good luck! True enough, but the kind of class consciousness that would blame Liz for feeling bad about her life and then taking a year abroad to cure what ails her strikes me as a bit disingenuous — a way of trivializing her trouble on the grounds of gender without having to come out and say so.
Really the objection has nothing to do with gender. I’d have the same objection if it was a man. There’s no shame in taking off if you don’t like how your life is going. But the fact is.. the 1st world troubles that most of us have is trivial compared to the problems that we’ll see when we travel to other parts of the world. We take it for granted that the American dream of a house, lawn, car, job, education is within grasp. It’s a symptom of a culture of entitlement that’s striking.
What “Eat Pray Love” has — what the superficial “Sex and the City 2” notably lacked — is a sense of authenticity [my emphasis]… Reflecting on her earlier life, she observes that for most of it she was either with a man or in the process of leaving one, and so in the first stages of her journey she experiments with singleness.
The three themes enumerated in the title are explored with a cheerful tact unlikely to trouble any tastes or sensibilities. The food is not overly spicy or exotic — spaghetti in Rome, pizza in Naples; the religion not uncomfortably, you know, religious; and the sex discreet almost to the point of invisibility.
I cringe at how authneticity is treated. Pizza in Italy, yoga in Bali? She’s experimenting with singleness?
“Eat Pray Love” is unlikely to change anybody’s life or even to provoke emotions anywhere near as intense as those experienced, early and late, by its intrepid heroine. Its span may be global, but its scope is modest, and it accepts a certain superficiality as the price of useful insight. Watch. Smile. Go home and dream of Brazilians in Bali.
So after watching this movie - go home and dream about it. Stay in your cubicles and your well worn relationships and 1st world annoyances and take comfort in the fact that by watching a fluff of a movie you can confront whatever troubles that ails you.
My gripe with movies and books like these is that it gives our entitled selves a false sense of security. Exploring the world in these constructs mean visiting the tourist trails and ticking off checklists. Travel instead ought to be about empathy, of understanding different viewpoints and how the world actually is. Authenticity is not based on your understanding of how Italians behave from movies or Indians believe from books or Indonesians live from postcards – it’s about breaking out of your mindset and being uncomfortable, being challenged and doing stuff. My gripe is that this movie pretends to address all of these issues when all it is is a big sentimental circle jerk for unhappy people who are unwilling to really change their lifestyle. So yeah, go watch the movie.. and keep on thinking of happily ever after and palm trees while you complain about stuff.