Yesterday I watch Eat Pray Love movie at my home. Yeah I know, I'm outdated on this one..Movie ni dah lama pun..Anyway, I want to tell a bit about this movie which I find very interesting.
‘Eat Pray Love’ – The Movie, is based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s book
also titled ‘Eat Pray Love’, a memoir of her travels around the world,
specifically Italy, India and Bali in an attempt to truly find herself.
On the other hand, ‘Eat Pray Love’ – The book, was on ‘The New York
Times Best Sellers’ list, an international bestseller, selling over 10
million copies worldwide, and the reason for this movie.
The author Liz Gilbert played by Julia Roberts, wakes up one day and realize that she was
lost and unhappy. She discovers that her marriage was causing her too
much sadness and misery, and ends it with divorce. To find her way she
ventures on a series of destinations that will help her discover how to
truly ‘Eat’ – Food (Italy), ‘Pray’ – Spirituality (India) and ‘Love’ –
(Bali).
This movie, possibly even the book (which I have not read), lists
more inner feelings that stem from the fields of self loathing, regret
and fear, but the author awakens to these things, that they exist in
her. That they exist in her life, in her heart, in her mind, and she
has drawn on courage to venture towards change, towards hope, towards
love. Love which she discovers as being the ‘balance’ needed. Love of
self, love of others, love of life.
Eat – So she sets out on her journey and makes friends in Italy. She
eats, and eats, and eats. Not feeling the sting of guilt for over
indulging or gaining more weight. Her remedy is to eat some more, and
if the jeans don’t fit, buy a bigger pair. In a quick montage, we see
her and her newly made friend eating and buying bigger jeans one after
another. She learns expression through the Italian culture, as her
guide teaches her the language and their way of being a true Italian.
Its all speaking with your hands.
Pray – After having a wonderful
time in Italy, she is pumped for her next journey, except this part of
the journey finds her in disarray. She goes to an Ashram which is a
spiritual hermitage (a place to spiritually gather in religious
seclusion). Here she meets Richard from Texas which at first glance
their introduction to each other seems like chalk and cheese, but in
time, they become very close and warm friends. Her personal yearning
for inner peace has become more like a battlefield and not what she
expected. At a glance, by being here its like she expected to be
smothered with peace. But in steps reality where true peace is not an
easy river to find or cross. It’s going to take swimming a moat to
reach, an image that Richard puts to Liz in an effort to tell her that
she may want the castle (peace) but she’ll have to earn it by swimming
the mote to get there. We continue to see Liz mastering her own
awkwardness and feelings of guilt with a broken marriage, through
meditation and coming to terms with her barriers. It seems this part of
her discovery is dealing with the reality of where her life is, and how
it brought her to this moment.
Love – Her last destination is actually a return to her inspiration
in the beginning. Previously Liz met a medicine man in Bali, Ketut. He relayed what was going to happen to her
in her life by reading her palm. He goes on to tell her that she will
live in Bali for three or so months and she will help him with his
English, and in return he will teach her all that he knows. He gives
her a picture that means to be firm standing which is signified by four
legs supporting the figure. And instead of a head with a face, we see
the face over the heart which signifies to look at the world through
your heart and not with your head. She leaves with the picture which
becomes the source of her journey when what Ketut read from her palm,
happens.
When she returns to Ketut, she scribes for him, putting down all his
words onto another lasting copy. While here she meets, purely by
accident, an accident that drove her off the road while push bike
riding, by a charming Brazilian man Philippe. It is here that she also
meets Wayan a Bali female and her daughter, a local traditional healer.
She becomes close to Wayan and builds a lasting friendship with her. A
connection blossoms for her and Philippe, a connection that turns into
romance. Not quite at first, but gradual.
With all her adventures finally coming together in balance, love
seems to be the most important lesson for her to learn. Love mended her
broken heart.
Liz was coming up to her birthday, and instead of a typical gift for
herself, she contacted her friends and told them about Wayan. How in
Bali a divorced woman gets nothing. That Wayan had to sell everything,
even her bathmat to pay for a lawyer to keep her daughter. With nowhere
to go, they moved from place to place and Tutti (the daughter) had to
change schools often. So she invites her friends to forgo a gift to her
and help Wayan by donating so that she could have a home. With this
single act, hearts overflowed with generosity and Wayan was given money
(from Liz’s friends) to own and build her very own place. It was a very
moving moment to watch, to see the love and joy felt and expressed.
In her email to her freinds, she wrote:
Dear
friends and loved ones: My birthday's coming up soon. If I were home,
I'd be planning a stupid, expensive birthday party and you'd all be
buying me gifts and bottles of wine. A cheaper, more lovely way to
celebrate would be to make a donation to help a healer named Wayan
Nuriyasih buy a house in Indonesia. She's a single mother. ln Bali,
after a divorce, a woman gets nothing,
not even her children. To gain custody of her daughter, Tutti, Wayan had
to sell everything, even her bath mat, to pay for a lawyer. For years,
they've moved from place to place. Each time, Wayan loses clientele and
Tutti has to change schools. This little group of people in Bali have
become my family. And we must take care of our families, wherever we
find them. Today l saw Tutti playing with a blue tile she'd found in the
road near a hotel construction site. She told me: Maybe if we have a
house someday, it can have a pretty blue floor like this. When I was in
Italy, I learned a word - It's "tutti" with double T, which in ltalian
means "everybody." So that's the lesson, isn't it? When you set out in
the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping Tutti.
So If you like journeys of self discovery, then this
is that perfect movie that can make you rethink, review, and relive.
There is a lot of honesty portrayed as Liz opens you up and invites you
to walk with her. Italy, India, Bali. They’re just locations, but the
growing is where the living begins. See
it with an eye of discovery, and a willingness to open yourself to the
honesty of self, of you.
”In the end, I’ve come to believe in something I call the
Physics of the quest. A force in nature governed by laws as real as the
laws of gravity. The rule of quest physics goes something like this.
If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and
comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter old
resentments, and set out on a truth seeking journey either externally or
internally. And if you are truly willing to regard everything that
happens to you on that journey as a clue. And if you accept everyone
you meet along the way as a teacher. And if you are prepared most of
all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself,
then the truth will not be withheld from you.”
