EAT PRAY LOVE (2010)

 

 Eat Pray Love (2010)

Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Ryan Murphy

Writers: Ryan Murphy (screenplay), Jennifer Salt (screenplay)

Stars:Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem and Richard Jenkins

My score 3.5/5

‘Eat Pray Love’ totally stand for its name. There are no gimmicks or hidden meanings to it. And most probably the longest romantic movie I have seeing in recent times that made me feel lot of things. Lots of things about life, living, falling in love and then relaxation, inner peace and food as well.

Liz Gilbert (Played by awesome Julia Roberts- Erin Brockovich, Notting Hill) is a married woman with complications. She finds that her life is not where exactly she wanted it to be and what’s happening around is not getting her anywhere. She decides to go on a journey of self-exploration leaving everything behind.  She gets a painful divorce and sets off on a one year journey. For months she lives in Italy getting to know the people and loving the food culture. Then she visits India and learns how to pray and meditate forgiving herself and others while residing in an Ashram. In the last few months she goes to Bali and study local medicine, culture and adds more inner peace to herself. In the meantime help the needy while peacefully finding her balance. This is where she truly finds the meaning of life and what it is to love someone without boundaries.

Simply put the story is long and feels like when it ends you have watched 3 movies all in one. It’s like the Julia Robert version of Lord Of the Rings where you meet many kinds of people, eat many kinds of food and then experience many kind of cultures. And she has her own kind of battles.

The character development is truly good. Liz is confused and has no clear direction of life, where she wants to be or for whom she wants to live for. She often wonder how it is to be  alone and looks at a relationship in a negative way with past experiences. And her self-exploration journey seems to be the one thing she lacked in her life to set everything straight. And the wonderful people she meets in the run gives her courage, happiness and most importantly true human companionship which she lacked back at home.

Maybe the best thing I like about ‘Eat Pray Love’ is that it takes you to places. It takes you to scenic places with diverse cultures. Introduce you to  different people with strange accents but still humans who have the same feelings. Puts you in different architectures and climates but reminds you that a place is not just beautiful because of the way it’s built but because of the people who live there. And then there are cultures, foods, sights and rituals which binds everything together.  In these lines the cinematography and the set development is breath taking. And the extraordinary length of the movies feels like a bliss and at some point you start to miss those places and people when you move on.

Julia does a wonderful job portraying this heavy hearted confused human being. There are several supporting rolls which is fun to watch and adds more value to Julia’s roll and the total plot.

‘Eat Pray Love’ is a good movie which does not come along every year. yes its long and different and maybe too slow at some points with long dialogues and paused moments. But it’s about life and living. If we can we all will get away like her. Life is too boring to be stuck at one place doing the same thing. 

 

Trailer