Contributing Writer
Like an epithet of three words decreeing simple instructions (à la Rinse-Lather-Repeat), the new Julia Roberts’ movie, “Eat Pray Love,” provides a simple recipe for life. While the three are all straightforward verbs, when combined, as they are in the beautiful tale of Elizabeth Gilbert’s (played by the effervescent Julia Roberts) journey to transformation, they paint quite a masterpiece. Eat Pray Love tells the tale of a woman’s marriage-gone-awry and the voyage to self-discovery as she puts the pieces of her life back together across several continents.
While it’s understandable in any break-up that grief will ensue; instead of burying her head in a pint of Häagen-Dazs, Liz Gilbert decides she is going to spend a year traveling– seeking the comfort of food in Italy, spiritual awakening in India and then wrapping up the year in Bali to study with a medicine man she had met the year before. As a person who embraces travel and adventure as a part-time profession myself, I understand her desire to surrender to the breakthroughs that inevitably come from cultural immersion. There is nothing like being surrounded by new tastes and bombarded with a foreign language to help you get outside of your own thoughts.
As you watch writer Liz Gilbert break down and make supportive friends in remarkable characters, like “Richard from Texas,” along the way; any person who has stood at a crossroads in their life cannot help but to feel compassion for her character. Everyone has had their heart broken at some point; however, most won’t drag their broken heart through three countries to heal. This is what makes the true story of Liz’s journey strike a chord; her humorous moments sprinkled throughout the otherwise dramatic plot key in making her novel with the same title, a bestseller.
I’ll admit my own proclivity towards the movie, as I read the book years ago after a somewhat traumatic break-up myself. However, I think men and women both, especially those who are “looking for something to marvel at” in their lives, will draw some gems from Eat Pray Love. As Julia Robert pursues one word to sum herself up in throughout the movie and finally settles on an inspirational Italian phrase, this movie can be summed in the “surrender” of oneself to the unknown. I hope that anyone who sees this movie will walk away with the notion to take some risks in their own lives; if there is one thing I learned from Eat Pray Love, it is that when you throw yourself into the current of possibility it will take you somewhere unexpected and wonderful.