Since Grace and I have a relationship vaguely based on a shared hatred for a film that neither of us had actually seen, we thought it might be a good idea to finally sit down and watch Eat Pray Love to ensure that it really was as bad as all that. So in a sense it's reassuring to report that, yes, it was. The following is a necessarily condensed summary of the film's most glaring failings, although the cumulative effect of awful scene piled on top of awful scene can only really be appreciated through your own personal viewing of what can be, perversely, a rather enjoyable collection of failure.
Warning: contains spoilers, if it is at all possible to 'spoil' Eat Pray Love.
Let's begin with a plot description nicked from Wikipedia:
Elizabeth Gilbert (Julia Roberts) had everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having - a husband (Billy Crudup), a house, a successful career - yet like so many others, she found herself lost, confused, and searching for what she really wanted in life. Newly divorced and at a crossroads, Gilbert steps out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life, embarking on a journey around the world that becomes a quest for self-discovery. In her travels, she discovers the true pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy; the power of prayer in India, and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of true love in Bali.
...except this is all a massive lie. For a start, Elizabeth does not have 'everything a modern women is supposed to dream of having'. High on the list of things which she conspicuously lacks are intelligence, charm, forethought or - critically - any interests whatsoever. She is also prone to the strange delusion that she is the first person ever in the history of mankind to get divorced or take a holiday. Because that, incidentally, is the second great lie of this synopsis: the idea that Liz 'risks everything'.
She goes on holiday.
That's it: a holiday. Don't get me wrong - I'm all in favour of holidays - but someone who claims to be going 'out of her comfort zone' in order to eat in restaurants deserves instant and lifelong social ostracism. Weirdly, Liz receives the opposite, being instantly befriended by just about everyone she encounters despite, as previously noted, a distinct personality deficit. And oh, how she is mollycoddled beyond all belief, at one point receiving a round of applause for managing to order spaghetti carbonara from a menu. (Although apparently carbonara is a bit of an unknown quantity in Hollywood, illustrated as it is with a shot of red sauce.) And when she isn't being indulged like a dying child, Liz nods vacuously at various pieces of empty and contradictory life advice thrown at her by a motley collection of Americans with dodgy accents: let go of love, love again, give up control, take control, strive for balance, forget about balance.
In fact, when you think about it, one of the most offensive implications of the film is that the world is staffed by such a loving network of wise Americans that during your life-changing travels around the world you barely have to speak to anyone local at all. But then the world as presented by Eat Pray Love totters on the brink of being a surreal parody of real life, partly when it comes to poor old Italy. Rome (fucking Rome!) has apparently been subject to a freak distortion in the fabric of space-time, flung back to an era with no running water, no advertising, little traffic and the lurking threat of malaria. Still, at least there she deigns to walk the streets: her time in India and Bali largely consists of 'risking everything' by staying in luxurious compounds. And praying.
Yes, let's come to the prayer. It is extraordinary, really, because this is a film which manages to insult the intelligence of both believers and non-believers alike. On the one hand, the assumption that Liz needs constant sprinklings of 'spiritual enlightenment' goes entirely unquestioned, and (naturally) it proves just as astonishingly effective as the carrot juice ("better than antibiotics") used at one point to treat what basically amounts to a bruised knee but is treated by a hysterical Liz as a near-death experience. (Note: if your doctor is commenting on the state of your cartilage whilst treating a graze, something somewhere is going badly wrong.) But whilst generic spirituality is served up on demand, it is never presented as anything other than a glorified therapeutic tool. Liz doesn't actually believe in anything, or - if she does - we don't learn about it, because Liz doesn't ever actually talk about anything other than her self-help programme. Even when she bores her friends into donating money so that the Cute Poor People in Bali can build a house, she's still talking about herself.
Oh, and since she dons a new outfit for each and every scene, we can only conclude that her tiny bag is bigger on the inside.
There is so much more I could mention: the ultra-lazy visual shorthand (career men can't hold babies, enlightened people light candles), the all-pervading Orientalism, the concept of liberation through eating pizza, the concept of liberation through eating pizza which you can't get in New York, the most confused discussion of feminism since the English Defence League went on Newsnight, some terrible dialogue (most notably when we suddenly learn that her plane leaves "in two hours") and the implication that almost killing your own child is just about comparable in the calamity stakes to divorce, and that's not to mention the fact that this whole disaster of film-making takes nearly two and a half hours to unfold.
But maybe I should be grateful. If you showed this film en masse to young children in schools and taught them all to never, ever live their lives like Elizabeth Gilbert, you might just transform the world into a better place.
~
And on a totally different note, after all this we went off to Caroline's for a very lovely evening of drinks, dips, pizza and cake. Delicious cake, in fact, and what with Saoirse's baking masterpiece I feel I'm on a bit of a roll with cake at the moment. If only I could crack whatever accidental system has arisen for encouraging my friends to bake I could be set for life...
Entertainment & Media Television, film, print, theatre, etc.
Wednesday, 30 March, 2011
Friday, 28 January, 2011
So this is an experiment, inspired entirely by watching Tash this morning, at reviewing the books I've read during 2011 so far. My tastes are perhaps rather eccentric, so this may not be of much interest to anyone, but let's give it a whirl. After all, since there are way too many interesting books to read in the world today, and far too little time to read anything at all, perhaps you can treat reading this review as sorta equivalent to actually having read these yourselves? Maybe?
Also, I'm putting off tidying my floor.
The Brain: A Very Short Introduction - Michael O'Shea
I'm rather addicted to the Very Short Introduction series even though I remember little of the detail after finishing, and thus the attempt to be more scientifically literate doesn't always progress much. Still, the brain is fascinating enough to read about repeatedly, and this book helpfully devotes a decent chunk of time just trying to establish the basics of how neurons actually work. Frustratingly, of course, some of the bigger questions about how consciousness as a whole physically comes about remain largely unanswered, and I very much hope that I'll be able to read an updated edition in 50 years' time summarising our further leaps in understanding. In the meantime, this is a primer to the usual high standards of the Very Short Introductions, although not quite as 'fun' as the still-extraordinary Phantoms in the Brain. And you know you're in safe hands with a book which stridently sets out the 'purely material terms' of the discussion in the very first paragraph: no messing about with spirituality here.
Longitude - Dava Sobel
I read this as part of my quest to finally get through some books which have been sitting on my shelf for years. The story of eighteenth century clockmaker John Harrison and his life's work building clocks accurate enough to determine longitude at sea, its greatest attribute is stimulating an appreciation of just how many people in the past worked their little socks off in cumulatively bringing us to where we are today. I mean, this guy really did care about his clocks, and hats off to him for that. The tone is breezy and easy to read - certainly no bad thing - although the narrative quest for heroes and villains does result in a number of people trotted out to be the 'bad guys', thwarting our 'lone genius' out of jealousy or contempt or bitterness, who unfortunately don't seem capable of much more serious villainy than perhaps keeping his clock in the sun for too long. Still, sometime it's nice to read history on a human-scale, and this book won't demand much of your time in return for making you a lot more knowledgeable about sea clocks.
Right Ho, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
Sublime. I'd never read any Wodehouse before, nor seen any adaptations, but this has instantly converted me into a fan. I sense that some people are turned off by a book set entirely in an inter-war bubble of insufferably posh idiots. Wodehouse is consistently mocking, of course, but it's certainly very 'gentle' (as my dad said a little dismissively) and inclined to leave you walking around for days muttering 'tush!' and 'what ho!' at the earliest opportunity. Is this inculcating a romantic attachment to a pretty unattractive world of, as previously mentioned, insufferably posh idiots? No, it isn't. It's just funny, OK? Beautifully written, wonderfully unstated and hilarious... give it a try, and leave the searing social critique for some other writer in some other book. Right ho, Jeeves!
On Liberty and other writings - J.S. Mill
Toby Young makes a habit of saying ridiculous things, but one of his more outlandish theories revolves around the learning of Latin being necessary because it 'teaches you to think' and 'argue logically' and 'swim 200 metres backstroke' and so on. It's a shame, not only because it demeans Latin, but also because it implies that English is somehow deficient as a language of serious thought. Reading J.S. Mill might cure him of this illusion. There are three works included here: 'On Liberty' (1859), 'The Subjection of Women' (1869) and his posthumous drafts of 'Chapters on Socialism'. Mill was progressive enough to render him immediately likeable to a modern audience, even if you don't agree with everything he says, and his writing style smacks of a fair-minded consideration of the arguments melded together with passionate force in articulating what he believes. (The defence of freedom of speech in 'On Liberty' is particularly good.) I found the final 'Chapters on Socialism' the most interesting, actually, mostly because I think they would pass the 'Saoirse test': a discussion thoughtful enough not to prompt a metaphorical shot to the head. It was the following line from 'On Liberty', however, which had me beaming with nerdy political thought love:
"It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake."
Also, I'm putting off tidying my floor.
The Brain; Longitude; Right Ho, Jeeves; On Liberty and other writings
The Brain: A Very Short Introduction - Michael O'Shea
I'm rather addicted to the Very Short Introduction series even though I remember little of the detail after finishing, and thus the attempt to be more scientifically literate doesn't always progress much. Still, the brain is fascinating enough to read about repeatedly, and this book helpfully devotes a decent chunk of time just trying to establish the basics of how neurons actually work. Frustratingly, of course, some of the bigger questions about how consciousness as a whole physically comes about remain largely unanswered, and I very much hope that I'll be able to read an updated edition in 50 years' time summarising our further leaps in understanding. In the meantime, this is a primer to the usual high standards of the Very Short Introductions, although not quite as 'fun' as the still-extraordinary Phantoms in the Brain. And you know you're in safe hands with a book which stridently sets out the 'purely material terms' of the discussion in the very first paragraph: no messing about with spirituality here.
Longitude - Dava Sobel
I read this as part of my quest to finally get through some books which have been sitting on my shelf for years. The story of eighteenth century clockmaker John Harrison and his life's work building clocks accurate enough to determine longitude at sea, its greatest attribute is stimulating an appreciation of just how many people in the past worked their little socks off in cumulatively bringing us to where we are today. I mean, this guy really did care about his clocks, and hats off to him for that. The tone is breezy and easy to read - certainly no bad thing - although the narrative quest for heroes and villains does result in a number of people trotted out to be the 'bad guys', thwarting our 'lone genius' out of jealousy or contempt or bitterness, who unfortunately don't seem capable of much more serious villainy than perhaps keeping his clock in the sun for too long. Still, sometime it's nice to read history on a human-scale, and this book won't demand much of your time in return for making you a lot more knowledgeable about sea clocks.
Right Ho, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
Sublime. I'd never read any Wodehouse before, nor seen any adaptations, but this has instantly converted me into a fan. I sense that some people are turned off by a book set entirely in an inter-war bubble of insufferably posh idiots. Wodehouse is consistently mocking, of course, but it's certainly very 'gentle' (as my dad said a little dismissively) and inclined to leave you walking around for days muttering 'tush!' and 'what ho!' at the earliest opportunity. Is this inculcating a romantic attachment to a pretty unattractive world of, as previously mentioned, insufferably posh idiots? No, it isn't. It's just funny, OK? Beautifully written, wonderfully unstated and hilarious... give it a try, and leave the searing social critique for some other writer in some other book. Right ho, Jeeves!
On Liberty and other writings - J.S. Mill
Toby Young makes a habit of saying ridiculous things, but one of his more outlandish theories revolves around the learning of Latin being necessary because it 'teaches you to think' and 'argue logically' and 'swim 200 metres backstroke' and so on. It's a shame, not only because it demeans Latin, but also because it implies that English is somehow deficient as a language of serious thought. Reading J.S. Mill might cure him of this illusion. There are three works included here: 'On Liberty' (1859), 'The Subjection of Women' (1869) and his posthumous drafts of 'Chapters on Socialism'. Mill was progressive enough to render him immediately likeable to a modern audience, even if you don't agree with everything he says, and his writing style smacks of a fair-minded consideration of the arguments melded together with passionate force in articulating what he believes. (The defence of freedom of speech in 'On Liberty' is particularly good.) I found the final 'Chapters on Socialism' the most interesting, actually, mostly because I think they would pass the 'Saoirse test': a discussion thoughtful enough not to prompt a metaphorical shot to the head. It was the following line from 'On Liberty', however, which had me beaming with nerdy political thought love:
"It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake."
Saturday, 08 January, 2011
A nicely fulfilling day yesterday! Went to lunch with Andrew and cousin Jamie, who's spending her last couple of days with us. It's been really great having her around, not least because of her enthusiasm for Firefly and generosity in helping me plan my California travels next month. (Less than a month to go before I'm off to the States now... exciting!) Then came back to more research and draft-reading for Melissa, whose book is now taking shape. Quite apart from the content, it's actually just really interesting to watch the process of writing a book up close, rather than just encounter a finished product all printed and bound and on sale. And then in the evening I went out to a lovely little gathering of Cambridge-peeps organised by Maryam: unsurprisingly, both education and Psychic TV came up. (Since my last post on here I've been followed by another 'psychic' on Twitter, whose website boasts a number of extraordinary predictions for 2011, delivered in creepy-trance-dialogue fashion with more than a twinge of Glenn Beck in the air. Needs to be seen to be believed.)
Needs to be seen to be believed'? Why, that's a highly convenient segue onto the pinnacle of yesterday: seeing The Room with Grace, Charlotte and Saoirse. In case you haven't heard of the cult of The Room, it's a notoriously awful film from 2003 which has generated a loyal fan base of adherents who enjoy watching one of the worst film ever made. And, truly, it's some of the most fun I've had in a cinema - The Room is gratuitously terrible and absolutely hilarious. So many standout moments to choose from: the terrible sex scenes, the fleeting and never mentioned again breast cancer, Denny's battle with drugs... if you don't see this film, you're missing out.
YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA!
"What kind of money, Denny?!"
YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA!
Thursday, 07 October, 2010
Avenue Q
Recommended!
Only for now! (Sex!)
Is only for now! (Your hair!)
Is only for now! (Nick Clegg!)
Is only for now!
Oh, and mega congratulations to Abbi and Paul for their official engagement! I love that couple
Monday, 20 September, 2010
