Why did they call this Eat Pray Love when it could have just as easily been entitled, “A Classic Example of Western Emptiness”? Or even better, “Lessons in Human Selfishness 101”? Not as catchy I will admit, but equally truthful. Eat Pray Love chronicles Elizabeth Gilbert’s travels and is based upon her memoirs of the same name. The story involves her struggles with emptiness and her decision to leave it all behind (loving husband, job, friends, family) to go travelling for a year. She decides she needs to ‘let it all go’ in order to find herself. Of course, you are not really ‘letting it go’ if you receive a huge pre-approved book deal to fund your travels to exotic locales, but that is by the by.
Anyway, Gilbert (played by Julia Roberts) recounts her year-long journey of self(ish)-discovery that involves a lot of eating, some praying, maybe a little loving, and a whole lot of moaning and moping. Julia Robert's character wants “something to marvel at” while she ignores the blessings she already has. Perhaps, if she had learnt to appreciate the goodness of the people around her a little more then she would have found more fulfilment. How on earth did so many people find this movie ‘enlightening’ because I found her to be a monumentally unsympathetic character? Each choice she makes seems entirely based upon her own comforts. The final nail in the coffin of her marriage to her original spouse (Billy Crudup) is because he decides to ‘find himself’ by re-training as a teacher. You know, make the world a better place through the education and formation of children. Well, this is way too much for our Liz who divorces her loving husband then and there because apparently, his selflessness was stifling her selfishness.
She makes her way through Italy, India and Bali and each stop feels more interminable than the last. As a food documentary this might have been somewhat interesting because Gilbert’s eating quest through Italy features some exquisite food shots. She ‘let’s go of everything’ by letting herself go so to speak. As a travel documentary it might even have been absorbing, because again, the camera work brings the best out of the surrounding beauty. But as a movie, and as a spiritual journey, maybe this should have been called, ‘Eat Pray Snooze’ because in well over 2 hours nothing really seems to happen. Julia Roberts fails to pull this character off, perhaps because her big Hollywood persona swamped it a little. I lost interest early on but she eventually stops whining and ends up with some other bloke and they sail off into the sunset. Well, not sail off because that would have been cheesy. No, they had a motor on the boat so they puttered off into the sunset which is much more compelling.
Look, I know I am being rather harsh, but I am so sick and tired of Hollywood’s constant message that enlightenment is all about making life more about you. There is an inherent selfishness to this viewpoint that robs us of our deepest humanity, because being fully human actually involves sacrificial communal connections. As the African theologian, John Mbiti famously said in response to Descarte: “"I am because WE are and, since we are, therefore I am." Or as the English theologian C.S. Lewis wrote: "Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."
I found nothing redeeming in Gilbert’s journey of ‘redemption’ except another case of candyflossed, ‘me-first’, skin-deep, sickening Hollywood quasi-spirituality. Eat Pray Love? Eat Pray Puke more like.
One out of five. And the one is awarded solely for the great food and travel shots.
Be warned that there is some strong language, and brief nudity.