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

Cafe Society
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Here’s a pretty good quote:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?

That bolded part is where Elizabeth Gilbert, the rotoscoped people in the Schwab ads, and the E-trade talking baby all fall short. Sure, take care of yourself, don’t live in submission to fear, reassemble your life as much as possible on your own terms. But don’t expect to be admired by the rest of humanity when you clearly don’t go to the next level of giving a damn about them.

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Uh, what?

People taking care of their financial investments are seen as selfish and/or narcissitic? Or are you just talking about the actors who appear in such commercials?

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Have you seen those commercials? No, there’s no virtue in being screwed by your broker, but the level of self-absorption and self-lauding the characters display is icky. “I played with my money better” isn’t much of a contribution to the sum of human achievement.

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Neither is you eating. So you can go ahead and stop doing that.

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Aren’t vacations kind of the definition of “self indulgent?” The whole point is to get away from your responsibilities and just do what you want for a week or so. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, provided you don’t abandon your responsibilities entirely.

Well, yes, in as much as “working through demons” implies a recognition that your behavior has caused harm to other people, and you want to prevent that harm from happening again in the future. Just saying “fuck it, imma do whatever I want to do,” isn’t “working through your demons.”

If you believe that her book contains, at its heart, a poisonous message, then it’s popularity is not a mitigating factor.

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“Self Lauding”?

No where in these commercials are they framing personal financial management as some kind of journey of/to self enlightenment.

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Don’t be a jerk, Drunky Smurf.

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Y’know, if the story had not contained a gratuituous negative depiction of the ex-husband, would there be lesser animosity? One wonders if, ironically, it was decided that he needed to be shown negatively lest her departure look too frivolous. Which it’s being called so anyway.

While at it, BTW, I believe the decision to break up was right: if things are at a dead end over something critical, it’s best to move along. But why cast villains?

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She’s a terrible person regardless (because of her “no reason” reason), but I bet if there was a lengthy chapter where she actually did face up to her demons and say “I’m a complete sack of shit for doing this because my husband was actually pretty great” there wouldn’t be any animosity.

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As I said before, I’ve read the book but haven’t seen the movie, so I’m not qualified to say one word on how the character of Elizabeth Gilbert is portrayed in the film. It is absolutely possible that the movie skimmed lightly over what the book delved more deeply into and that it’s that that’s creating the disconnect between what I read and what I see people responding to here.

In the book, however, Gilbert doesn’t pull her punches on herself. She makes clear that it isn’t that her husband has done anything wrong, it’s that she’s increasingly aware that the marriage is fundamentally broken because she and her husband want profoundly different things. I caught the scene in which she prays for guidance on YouTube and it’s a very mild version of what was in the book, which has her collapsed in choking sobs on the bathroom floor. After she and her husband split up, she very nearly hurt herself with a knife; she calls a dear friend who gets her professional help. She goes through a profound depression and is tormented with guilt and shame. The only thing I recall her writing about her husband that was at all negative is that he went after all her assets and that it was only when he wanted a portion of her future earnings that she began to fight back.

The entire point of the year away was to have her work on herself so that she could be a whole person in the future. She went to Italy because she wanted to learn Italian. Part of the pleasure she got in the food was from her having lost a sharp amount of weight throughout the divorce process.

She was involved with a guy in New York before the divorce but breaks up for good with him when she’s in Italy and resolves to keep sexuality out of her life until she has gotten herself more together, at least until that year of self-exploration is up. She ends up getting involved with the Brazilian man she meets in Bali after he persuades her to take a chance on love again.

I guess that, for me, the fundamental point of the book is ‘charity begins at home.’ If you don’t have your own house in order, you don’t have anything to offer anyone else. I don’t think that that’s a bad message. I know too many women who always put their own needs after everyone else’s and never have the time to focus on them, to the point that they lose sight of who they are apart from the role that they fill.

Again, I’m held back by not having seen the movie. Lots of books have been rendered two-dimensional in the process of being turned into films. Can anyone who has both read the book and seen the movie comment? I almost feel that the spiritual journey of the book must have been reduced to a pretty-postcards-from-exotic-locations film version, judging from what people have been writing.

Because otherwise, all this contempt seems excessive to me. Because a woman left her husband? People leave their marriages every day. Because she eats delicious food in foreign countries? Really? Because she gets into a new relationship well after her divorce is final? Because focusing on your own needs is selfish and needs to be punished? Gee.

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To me the leaving your husband was part of it, but the deeper part of it to me was her “spiritual journey.” I haven’t read the book, only seen the movie. But the movie is a travel fantasy - her spiritual journey does not come off as a search for herself, but as a highly materialistic experience - the “rich white people in an ashram in India gaining wisdom by eating vegetarian,” “I’ll rent a house in Bali overlooking the beautiful ocean and by looking over the beautiful ocean will understand my place in the world.”

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Okay, you guys motivated me to go out and get the book. I am about halfway through.

She states that she does not want to bring her husband’s behavior in the marriage into the book, and she doesn’t. The most she says about her marriage is that they both had their respective bad traits, and that she had been miserable for some time. She says nothing about his job except that she was the breadwinner. It does seem the primary conflict is they had planned to settle down and have a family when she hit thirty, but when that date finally came she realized she REALLY did not want kids and did not want to settle down.

In other words, the name calling, the callousness, the cheating, the lack of thought, the abrupt and groundless decision…none of those are actually there.

She does speak about his behavior after the divorce, but in fairly broad terms. She expresses frusteration with the animosity and complications of the divorce, but she doesn’t really make it personal, though it seems like she could have.

Anyway, it’s an occassionally clever book, though not my cup of tea. She comes off as a bit pleased with herself, and a bit of a navel gazer, and a bit hippy dippy. But she doesn’t seem like a horrible person, just an occasionally obnoxious one.

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Most of the people here are talking about the movie.

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Yes, that’s part of the problem here. I’ve both read the book and seen the movie (which, to read so many, “well, I haven’t seen or read it but…” comments makes me think I’m the one unqualified to have an opinion here) and the movie sucks, big time. Liz in the movie is a cunt, no question. Liz in the book, I don’t believe her to be. Elizabeth Gilbert, I’ve never met and so don’t have an opinion about.

But we also have a lot of angry divorced men projecting like super 8’s all over this thread. The Liz in the movie is a bit of a cunt, but she’s not as horrible as this thread makes her seem, either. She’s a princess, and because so much of her process in the book is internal, it doesn’t come off well on screen. But I don’t recall any bitchiness or husband blaming or evilness, either. Just a little higher on the clueless quotient than the novel because we don’t share her inner experience as well as we can in the novel.

And, as I said in either this thread or the other nearly identical one from years ago, the men in the film were cast all wrong. Richard was small, spiritually and physically, and what’s-his-name the Brazilian was actually *younger *than Julia Roberts. I mean…really?! The whole CAUSE of her do-I-date-him agony was that he was in her superficial category of undatable men due to his age, and finally she got over it and saw him as a person, ditched the superficial categories in her head and gave him a chance. In the movie, it’s more like she didn’t want date him 'cause…um…never mind, she dates him. Very weird and unexplored and not at all sexy. The stuff with Wayan was chopped so that the actual point - Liz’s realization that her friend was scamming her and she was going to have to woman up and put her foot down in a loving and compassionate way - a way in which she was never able to accomplish with her husband - all gone.

Posters are largely right about the *movie *- there was no growth to speak of in movie Liz. She starts out clueless and self-absorbed and grows to be clueless and self absorbed with better lighting and wardrobe. But she’s, basically, too clueless and self absorbed to even begin to be evil and manipulative and all the rest she’s being accused of. It’s like accusing a toddler of being a cunt. They’re not cunts, they’re just…toddlers.

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And I’m sure Dan Brown is a really nice guy and probably a better-than-average writer, but when you become an international best seller and Oprah is pimping your book and then they make a goddamn movie about it, “Just occasionally obnoxious” doesn’t cut it. By virtue of her success, we expect greatness, and when greatness is not found there’s a terrible backlash.

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So WhyNot seems to agree with the criticism of the movie, but also needs to take a gratuitous swipe at “angry divorced men projecting like super 8’s.”

I don’t get that. You’re saying the same things. I’m happy and married and said the same things. My wife felt similarly. Dangerosa and other women have said the same. Where’s the projecting bullshit about angry divorced men coming from?

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[bolding mine]

You’re both kidding, right? (No, you probably aren’t…)

“I won’t open any of that,” Gilbert does indeed say (IN THE BOOK–I haven;t seen the movie) with regard to why she left her husband, but read just a little further:

“…communications [he sent me] reminding me of what a criminal jerk I was.”

“He let me know that I was a liar and a traitor and he hated me and would never speak to me again.”

These really are not the remarks of somebody who isn’t making it personal. Or who is actually taking the high road.

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I only agree insofar as to agree she’s clueless and self-absorbed.

I don’t agree that a person who is clueless and self-absorbed is a cunt.

I don’t agree that a person who is clueless and self-absorbed is “a really horrible, shallow and callous person,” or a “selfish, callous manipulators who justify their behavior by attempting to appeal to others’ sympathy for their suffering,” or “a callous piece of shit,” or even, “an awful person” who “does hurtful things without remorse or reflection.”

And you were actually pretty nice about it, and all those quotes are yours. Those are descriptors I’d expect to read about a serial killer or a war criminal, not a woman who went on vacation to navel gaze and they made a movie about it.

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I’m also not a divorced man.

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:confused: