Starts September 23
Many of you will have read the popular book, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, as it spent 150 weeks on the New York Times best seller list. As many best sellers, this tale was turned in to a movie with the main character being played by Julia Roberts. The story covers that part of Gilbert’s life when she leaves a failing marriage to (Billy Cudrup) and a love affair with a younger man (James Franco) to spend a year living in Italy, India and Bali seeking to find out who she is and what she was lacking in her life.
She funds her trip including airfare and accommodations, gurus, wardrobe, ashram and food, on her advance to write this book. The journey covers Gilbert's life abroad where she ignores weight gain and body issues as she eats her way through Italy – trying to find happiness and fulfillment in personal friendships and food. From there she heads to India where she visits a Yoga Ashram in search of inner peace and balance, but ends up meeting an older Texan, played by Richard Jenkins. Jenkins challenges Gilbert to forgive herself for some of her past mistakes and failed marriage. Gilbert then goes on to Bali where she meets a local beloved advisor, a natural healer, and a lover (Javier Bardem) healing from his own pain of a failed marriage.
If you were able to get through the first two tragic chapters in the book discussing her divorce to finish the book, then you will find this book-turned-movie is fairly true to the book but the characters, other than Jenkins, do not seem to come alive and therefore you lack a connection with them. The many fans of Gilbert’s books will like the movie but will not be overwhelmed; it is difficult to make a book come alive.
I wanted to be more drawn in to the story making the book come alive in film.