Eat Pray Love (the movie): is Elizabeth Gilbert a [expletive] or is it just me?

Cafe Society
1

Watched the movie Eat Pray Love tonight. I did not read the book, nor will I read it even at gun point! So any references to the differences of the book/movie will be ignored.

Heres the gist of what I got from the movie:

Elizabeth Gilberts’ husband is a doofus who needs to grow up, man up, pick a life and a career and get a real job and so on. But as far as I can tell, he doesn’t cheat on his wife, hit her, do drugs/alcohol, gamble the rent away, and appears to truly love and be in love with her.

The fact that he loves and is in love with her is presented a couple of times throughout this film.

He does need to grow up, man up, and be a man and a husband is a serious fault, but when you consider how rotten some men can be with their dicks, their fists, wallets, etc., he could be a lot worse.

But Elizabeth Gilbert needs to run around the world and “find her self” even contrary to visions of her husband telling her how much he loves, needs, and misses her.

She is also told by people she meets on the way that she needs to let go and forgive herself.

From what?
5000 sucked leper cocks? A million six abortions? Little Timmy who found her loaded handgun in the brothel restroom she was working at and accidentally blew his brains out? What was she so depressed and felling guilty about? If it was about leaving her goofball husband, go back to him, insist he straighten up a bit, and resume life. He really wasn’t that bad of a guy.

Or am I missing something?:confused:

2

In the book, Gilbert is careful to state that she is aware that there’s no way she can be objective in discussing her divorce, and to state that her husband was not an ogre in any way. Her husband never appears as a character in the book, she does not discuss his behavior or him in other than very general terms.

I’ve heard this objection about the book and movie (which I have not watched), and frankly, do not understand it. She no longer loved him, and no longer wanted to be married to him, and felt guilty for those feelings BECAUSE of the lack of a “reason.” Why on earth is it expected that she remain in a marriage that she no longer wanted, especially given that they had no children?

So her husband loves her, but she doesn’t love him anymore. Why does this make her a cunt? People fall out of love. It sucks, and it sucks majorly when there’s not a “reason,” but she felt that to continue in a marriage that she no longer wanted was not fair to either of them.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Again, I haven’t seen the movie, so I have no idea how it’s portrayed there. I’m simply relating the book’s discussion of the marriage/divorce issue.

3

I’m sure there was a reason, but she just didn’t know what it was and she was too lazy or selfish to figure out what it was or attempt to fix her marriage. She comes across as spoiled by running away from her “problems” (which pale in comparison to most people’s issues).

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I don’t intend to see the movie, or read the book. But based on the descriptions in this thread so far, she’s a cunt. If her love and marriage were simply based on some random emotion that came and went with the wind, then she used the guy. Should she forgive herself for that, I don’t know, but she has no business getting involved in a serious relationship again.

6

Frankly, I think that people really don’t give a damn about her reasons, because regardless of whether or not she had a “good enough” reason, they’re primed to see her as a spoiled princess. I have no idea where this hatred of the protagonist came from, but it strikes me as reactive, especially when people admit they’ve not either read the book or seen the movie.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the book as great literature or anything. But this isn’t the first time someone on these boards has called her a selfish lazy cunt for basically experiencing something that millions of people have experienced - falling out of love.

7

I didn’t see it but my mother did, and she totally thought the main character was a cunt.

8

I’ll back you up on this one, Kolga. Even more important than not wanting to stay in a loveless relationship, I think, is the issue of children. He wanted them, she didn’t. That’s a no-win situation.

Option A: She doesn’t have kids. He misses out on something he really wants, has a hole in his life. Possibly (probably) resents her for it. He’s unhappy, she’s unhappy.

Option B: She has kids, for him. Maybe, possibly, she falls in love with her kids as they come and winds up a great Mom. But that’s a huge risk to take–there’s a real possiblity she’ll resent her kids, and their dad, and there’s no way the kids won’t feel that. She’s unhappy, the kids suffer.

Option C: They divorce. After a period of unhappiness, both have the opportunity to go get what they want.

Seems obvious to me.

9

You forgot the option where instead of getting married, she tells him that she is not really in love, only temporarily infatuated. Again, didn’t read the book, or see the movie, that’s just based on the comments in this thread of those who did. And gender is irrelevant. Men shouldn’t treat women that way either.

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I haven’t read the book/seen the movie either, but if there was a dispute over whether or not to have kids, she did the best thing she could. It would have been far more devastating in the long term for her to swallow her feelings now and then end up regretting it and resenting her children and husband.

Besides, nobody should have to stay in a relationship they don’t want to be in. How long does she owe it to the guy who loves her to be unhappy? Should she live in simmering resentment for five, ten years?

Unless she knocked him unconscious, lifted his wallet, and sold his dog before fleeing in his vintage Mustang which she later abandoned at the airport, I don’t think she really deserves to be called a cunt because she didn’t want to be married to some dude forever.

11

Unfortunately, since you didn’t read the book, you’re not aware that she did love him when they married, and assumed that she’d be ready for children at some point. The fact that both of these changed does not make her a cunt, and does not mean that she knew she was going to fall out of love with him when she married him.

By the time they divorced, they’d been married for six years and together for eight. If you want to blindly insist on carrying through with the mindless Gilbert-hate, feel free, but I fail to see how an eight-year relationships meets your definition of “temporarily infatuated.” Unless you think that no one ever should divorce unless there’s actual physical abuse or cruelty.

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Do people really get married without figuring out if they both want children or not?

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Yes. People get married without making sure they have the same goals all the time. And of course it’s possible to change your mind, or not being 100% committed but hoping you’ll get there one day.

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Yes. All the time. And people get married thinking they want children, and then realizing some time later that they really don’t. And people get married thinking that they DON’T want children, and realize some time later that they actually do. Or people change their minds. Or people change.

If anybody’s actually interested in reading Gilbert’s own words about her thought process regarding her marriage and not wanting children when she thought she would, it’s on pages 9 - 12 of the book, which are available in free preview on Amazon.com. You can read the actual words of the actual cunt herself, explaining her terribly selfish self.

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I’m only talking about the movie, haven’t read the book and wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, but as to the character in the the movie, it’s not just you. She’s a profoundly self-absorbed cunt, and ditching her husband for no reason wasn’t the only example. The worst was her total hypocrisy in telling a girl in India to go ahead with an arranged marriage she wants nothing to do with (after she herself ditched her husband just to go fuck some other douchebag), then stiffing her on a wedding gift by telling her that her gift was “channeling her love” at them during the ceremony. Textbook narcissist.

Incidentally, I don’t know or care what her book reasons were for leaving her husband, but in the movie it was based solely on hearing voices (literally hallucinating a voice) telling her to leave. There was no indication that there was anything else wrong with the marriage. The kids thing doesn’t fly with me because she knew that when she married him. That’s nothing that changed. If she wasn’t ok with that, she shouldn’t have married him in the first place.

Incidentally, when men take off on women like that, women always see them as assholes. Chick flicks are hypocritical that way, just like they always have a double standard about infidelity (men cheat because they’re evil, women cheat because the men they’re with are evil).

16

Ok, I can buy that. Then what does she need to be forgiven for? How did she end it? If she woke up one morning, thinking ‘I don’t love him anymore’, then took off, she’s still a cunt. But if she gave it some time to make sure it wasn’t a temporary uninfatuation, and squared up accounts with the guy, then that’s just the way it ends sometimes. I’m not seeing much of a point to this story.

17

She felt guilty because of what this thread is revealing - that she didn’t have a “good enough” reason to leave. She did not have an affair (she started dating someone after she left her husband, and did not leave her husband for the guy). She attempted to square up accounts, and ended up giving him more than his fair share of the financial arrangements, but got a lawyer involved when he started demanding things like a 50% share of any future earnings from any future writings that she might receive.

She wrote the book just because. She’s a writer. That’s what she does. She had the opportunity to travel to some countries and write about it, so she did.

There wasn’t anything in the book about any arranged marriage, so it sounds like (surprise surprise) the screenwriters for the movie took a hell of a lot of liberties that were designed to perpetuate the “Gilbert is a selfish cunt” belief.

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Yes, I’m sure that was totally the screenwriters’ goal.

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So its a book and movie about a break-up. Not exactly the kind of thing that interests me. I can see that the way to depict her is as a ‘selfish cunt’, because that’s how people feel when the other person breaks up with them without ‘a good reason’. People tend to take sides in these things, and experience tells me at least one party has done something wrong, and isn’t admitting it. But experience also tells me that when a relationship is over, the reasons don’t matter anymore, you can’t unring the bell.

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I don’t know what’s more shocking to me personally. The fact that someone can have an opinion on a film they haven’t even seen nor read the book of:

Or the fact that Diogenes and I agree on something:

I guess I picked the wrong week to quit drinking!:p:D;)