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 Yeah I know, I'm outdated on this one..Movie ni dah lama pun..Anyway, I want to tell a bit about this movie which I find very interesting.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:
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.”
