Eat Pray Love = Pay Sit Stare
Whether you’re a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert or a lover of Julia Roberts – I happen to be both – you’ve likely had the release date of Eat Pray Love marked on your calendar for nearly a year. Mothers must select movies wisely as a trip to Loews is as rare as a 12 month trip to Italy, India, and Indonesia. Unless you’re Elizabeth Gilbert, armed with a publisher’s advance and no child to check at Skycap, in which case you can ready your passport and get your vaccines in order.
Eat Pray Love, in written form, drew its critics, and any person still agonizing over the $10 wasted trying to follow Duplicity will find fault with Julia’s larger than life persona. Neither is perfect, but ironically that’s the beauty in the story that Gilbert lived and Roberts portrays: A woman who appears so balanced yet can’t find her footing. Reviewers and readers alike panned Gilbert for her perceived self-indulgence, both in ending a marriage that wasn’t intolerable and setting out on a trip dedicated to serving only herself. Many couldn’t relate to her constant residence within her own head, straining to comprehend whether she’s a woman meant to dwell in the suburbs or a writer meant to wander on the road. In my own circle there was a lot of confusion as to why she couldn’t be both, settled in her career and content in her marriage. As Gilbert details in the book and Roberts gives life to on-screen, from the vantage point of a broken woman crouched in desperate prayer upon the bathroom floor, she pleads for aid in choosing the role to occupy. And the answer, whether provided by God or a fistful of Xanax, sends her packing. Literally.
Her journey of self-discovery and renewal begins in Italy, where she nourishes her body and feeds her soul. Any mother whose sustenance comes from chipping away the petrified remains from a highchair should be warned that the food porn that rolls out on screen is enough to make you want to abandon your family for an Italian jaunt yourself. The food is so lovingly pictured and convincingly eaten by Roberts that your mind and mouth will start to fool you into believing the pretzels and Diet Coke you sneaked inside within your purse are actually spaghetti…pizza…bread drowning in olive oil…or the most sinful gelato.
You will be reminded you are eating stale pretzels upon her arrival in India. This is the valley in Gilbert’s journey to the heavens. This is where she is forced to ‘deal with herself’ through strict meditation and mental examination. As a former devotee of yoga, the idea of solo travel to India where I can empty the cluttered corners of my mind and wear a badge declaring, “I’m in Silence,” (do those work for toddlers?) sounds intoxicating even if the food sucks and the environs are stark and solitary. Her time spent there is carefully crafted, both in the book and on film, so that Gilbert remains within the shroud of the Ashram. Should the cameras have taken to the streets of India, the white woman’s burden we are all investing in would pale in comparison to limbless babies and streets running wet with human urine. The contrast in struggle reminded me of the time my mother taught severely handicapped children and her tolerance for complaints over stolen pencil cases and unsatisfactory lunchbox offerings would bottom out with a guttural scream, “I taught a child without a head today! Stop whining!” This is similar; If you don’t dwell on the inadequacy of her problems when set against the backdrop of a country riddled with more chaos than the Jackson family, you can continue to walk beside her along her path.
The final chapter of Gilbert’s voyage across her mind and the world is set in the exotic milieu of Bali. She concludes her journey there so that she can once again commune with her personal Yoda, Ketut, the mystic who foretold of Gilbert’s failed marriage and financial collapse. When I finished the last word of the book and began pondering my own hypothetical post-marital, mental-apocalypse escape, I found myself fantasizing of Italy and India for many of the reasons Gilbert did, but Bali did not make my itinerary. That is until I saw it in its Technicolor radiance on screen. The world looks more vivid, as though viewed on the pages of a glossy magazine after enhancements, in the Southern Hemisphere with its untamed vines and exploding bouquets of Gardenias and Lotus flowers at every turn. One could nearly smell the floral aroma in the theater, though it may have been the comingling of many competing perfumes in a theater packed entirely with women. This is the phase of Gilbert’s year abroad where, perhaps predictably, having learned to love herself, she is now open to the possibility of loving another. Enter Javier Bardem. After watching him gaze at Gilbert’s character as though she is the most illustrious flower in all of Indonesia, all any women can think is, “I need a bicycle…and a Brazilian.” Not the waxing variety either though we could all probably use that, too.
While the journey Elizabeth Gilbert embarked on is both literally and figuratively a thousand miles away from the feedings, laundry, work schedules, and financial woes that fill the days of many modern women, she is a reminder to us to study the pores of life and go after the happiness you want them to exude. There is more to her mission than eating great cuisine and acquiring stamps to her passport. Her quest to find herself in foreign lands, among strangers and cultural barriers, is a brave example of what women will do when forced to overcome agony. We don’t buy a Ferrari and look for a new mate half our age. We seek to redefine ourselves and grab new levels of hope and inspiration. We should wish to never hit the depths of emotional anguish Gilbert sunk to. For those who will, there may never be the opportunity for total abandonment of worldly and familial concerns. Gilbert lacked financial worries and the very oversized carry-on luggage that children represent, which in reality is how she was able to take this trip. As a former backpacker, I spent the entire drive home pondering over the realization I could never take flight as she did now that I have three children. Yet I did get myself to the movies; And these days, that can take as much planning as a year on the road. And the restoration I got from those two hours in a theater with a friend felt a little like the peace that comes from eating, praying, and loving. We have to nab it in small and less remarkable ways. Even if those ways do not include Javier Bardem or a bathtub filled with gelato.
Erin Domareki lives with her family in the suburbs of New Jersey, outside of New York City. Her children keep her on her toes and her husband keeps her on the verge of a mental breakdown. She writes about the comedy of marriage on her website I’m Gonna Kill Him
