c7_assassin
3rd Level Black Feather
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A few days ago, a friend suggested I watch Eat, Pray, Love as part of an article I was thinking about writing. I took his advice, and now I've forgotten what that article was supposed to be about because all my memories and emotions have been replaced by hate for this fucking film.
Eat, Pray, Love stars Julia Roberts as a beautiful, successful, (rich) writer with a loving husband and a great career. She then throws it all away when she realizes she's not completely happy with her life. See how long it takes you to figure out the source of her problems:
1) "I mean, here I am with a ninth-generation medicine man, and what to I want to talk about? Saving the world, helping starving kids? Nope. I want to talk about my relationships."
This line is the movie in a nutshell, and if you can't figure out why it makes me hate the character, that's probably because you wrote it. Julia Roberts plays a shallow, self-obsessed, deluded woman who thinks she's god's gift to the world. How they ever thought to cast Julia Roberts in this role is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Her brilliant plan to achieve true happiness (as opposed to all that materialist garbage that only passes for happiness in the dumb, McDonaldized West) is to live abroad for a year without working, sampling the local wine and culture, first in Rome, then India, and finally in Bali. Oh, if only more people knew it was that simple! I'm not going to come out and say this movie hates poor people, mostly because they don't even exist in this universe. It's like they're beamed away by the sheer happy whiteness radiating from Ms. Roberts' teeth.
2)"Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face."
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First Julia Roberts has to discover that she's in a loveless marriage. She asks her friend's advice on whether she and her husband should have a baby, and this is the answer she gets. You know, maybe it's not all Julia's fault that she's so vapid; I mean, if this is what passes for 'advice' in her friend's mind, Julia probably hasn't heard a rational string of words put together in years.
But no, let's run with this idea. The following are ways in which having a baby is sort of like getting a tattoo on your face:
1)It's always, always a mistake, and you will regret it instantly.
2)In tribal New Zealand, it symbolized that you were a particularly dangerous form of cannibal.
3)A Belgian girl once sued a guy for giving her one without permission.
3) "Hello, God? Nice to finally meet you."
"It's me, Julia." Oh come on, you wretched screenwriter, you can't give us two thirds of the cliche and then puss out at the last second. It's odd that in a movie where the word "Pray" is 1/3 of the title, this is the first and last time we will ever see Julia Roberts praying, and it's apparently also the first time she's done it in her life. God doesn't answer, but she also makes it back from India with both her feet, so maybe miracles do happen.
4) Husband: "I don't want to go to Aruba." Julia: "I don't want to be married."
This is how Julia Roberts announces to her husband that their marriage is over. I am not taking this out of context: that's the whole exchange. Have I mentioned that her character is kind of a bitch? Her husband has trouble accepting that she would file for divorce without even trying to discuss what was wrong with their marriage, and yeah, he's got a fucking point there. Hilarity ensues at the divorce proceedings when he spells out in detail all the ways in which this makes her a goddamn lunatic, and I don't know how anyone expects us not to be on his side when we got to see the whole thing for ourselves.
5)"It's unnerving when a total stranger sees you clearer than you see yourself. That's what I meant when I said you were short."
Have I mentioned that Julia Roberts is kind of a bitch? Context, by the way, does not help this line: Julia Roberts saw an actor, James Franco, onstage, then saw him offstage, then immediately called him short to his face. I guess she was trying to unnerve him? Is that what this means? Here's a project: try speaking to stranger like this, and then mail me all the teeth you lose so I can pour them into the director's mouth while he's sleeping.
Then she sleeps with James Franco, by the way. Do you all just love her yet?
6)James Franco: "If you stay, we'll go out for Indian every night." Julia: "You never asked me to stay."
So what the fuck was that first line, Julia? Imagine this exchange between a gunman and a hostage negotiator: "For the love of God, Sol, please, please put down the gun!" "You never asked me to put down the gun!" *BOOM*
Let this be a lesson to you, James Franco: when a woman has just dumped her loving husband for no reason, and openly mocks you as a substitute for saying hello, she might just be a heartless bitch.
So with that, Julia's off on her whirlwind adventure of eating, praying, and loving like an intercontinental ballistic missile of smiles, self-indulegence and privilege!
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/julia%20roberts%20smile" target="_blank"><img src="http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k79/csande47/julia-roberts-baby.jpg" border="0" alt="smile Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
7)"You American girls. When you come to Italy, all you want is pasta and sausage."
One of the little charms of this film is that every so often a character will call Julia Roberts a self-absorbed **** right to her face. The old Italian lady who delivers this gem gets further points for denigrating not just her, but all the spoiled, rich women she represents, who I have to figure are this film's target audience.
Julia just smiles that duck-billed grin of hers, because it's been established that yes, in fact, that is the only reason she's in Italy. She treats this as a gentle ribbing, not as a representation of how much contempt these people actually generate everywhere they go. Scenes like this make me think that this might be the most subtly subversive film ever made, except that it's not. This film has less respect for foreign cultures than the smallpox virus.
8)"I'm the luckiest girl in the world."
Fuck this stupid woman.
<a href="http://s932.photobucket.com/albums/ad163/j_gallag/?action=view¤t=Julia.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i932.photobucket.com/albums/ad163/j_gallag/Julia.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
9)"Is there anything in the world more skinny than a teenaged Indian boy?"
Hey-o, racism! You're right, there is nothing skinnier than a teenaged Indian boy... except maybe a Somalian on a low-carb diet!
The film gets away with this line because it's spoken by an Indian girl, who's distraught because she's being forced to marry one of those skinny Indian boys against her will. In other words, she's about to enter a loveless marriage. Julia Roberts reacts to this news by giving her absolutely no advice whatsoever, even though this is literally the only situation in which Julia Roberts could plausibly be helpful. Not even a simple "I know what you're going through." Nothing, because this is still all about her somehow.
10) "How does she do it? She looks like Mother Teresa!"
This is in reference to a character whom Julia Roberts spies in the lotus position, serenely meditating in a Hindu ashram, just like Catholic nuns always do.
11)Julia: "I imagined you looking at each other with love and kindness. It seemed very real." Indian Girl: "Thank you so muc, Liz. That helps me believe it as well."
Did I say Julia offers nothing to the betrothed Indian girl? Scratch that: she offers her condescending, saccharine, utterly meaningless happy thoughts. And the poor girl eats up. If this is what passes for marriage counselling in India, it's no wonder half of Indian marriages end in a puddle of gasoline.
This is the "Pray" part of the film, so I guess we need to talk about that bullshit for a second. You know why I don't like this movie? Because it's porn for stupid aimless losers. The idea that the secrets to life's mysteries can be unlocked by visiting some Eastern temple and hanging out with white-bearded mystics is a myth invented by white people. Third-world people may not know the secrets of happiness, but step one for most of them seems to be getting the fuck out of the third world.
I'm not pissing on the idea of taking off to some foreign locale for awhile to drink and fuck strangers. That's half of the reason we invented sea travel. So I guess what I'm saying is, focus on that if you're ever abroad. Because if you spend all your time in some filthy temple eating bad food, scrubbing floors, and thinking about the sound of one hand clapping, eventually you're going to realize that you still don't have any answers, and that old Buddhist guy has been staring down your shirt this whole time.
12) "God dwells within me. As me."
Deep, huh? Actually I think Julia might have been ad-libbing here.
13)Old Balinese Guy: "You, you, you!" Julia: "Me, me, me!"
Priceless, no? I like to imagine that there is no context to this line, and when Julia is travelling she just greets strangers by gushing "Me, me me!" at them. Sadly, this is when she is back in Bali, talking to the same medicine man she met earlier. She proudly informs him that she has returned to Bali, just as he prophesied, and that she ended her marriage, just as he prophesied she would, and she is now here to serve him. Regrettably, we don't see him gaping in horror at this news, probably because he can tell that she'd take a reaction like that about as well as a woman who threw her life away because an old Balinese man told her to.
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/gun" target="_blank"><img src="http://i383.photobucket.com/albums/oo276/Hellhound6989/Enoch/coltm1911texasah3.jpg" border="0" alt="Gun Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
14) "Thank god for Brazilians."
This is the sum total of the film's romantic advice. So this is Julia's lesson to you, ladies: when in doubt, fuck a Brazilian. This film relies on ethnic stereotypes so heavily it set the civil rights movement back 190 years.
You know, I just thought of a much better title for this movie: Binge, Purge, Fuck a Brazilian.
15) "When you set out in this world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping Tutti."
And now we come to the moral of the film. Tutti is the name of a poor Balinese girl with a single mother, and it's an Italian word she learned that means "everybody." Julia, shocked at finally running into a disadvantaged person during her extensive travels in Italy, India, and Bali, persuades her rich friends back home to pitch in and buy this woman a home. Tutti and her mother react to the news by jumping up and down and dancing, while Julia Roberts smiles in beatific glee at the joy she has been able to bring to these little people, and therefore, somehow, to "everyone."
And that's the message: be self-absorbed, be shallow, be wealthy and self-indulgent and don't worry about what others think. God dwells within you, as you, and you deserve everything you have. It's all okay, because sometimes, when you set out to help yourself, you can be impressed by a cute brown-skinned waif long enough to pull her family out of homelessness. You'll feel so good, it'll be like you really are god! And don't you deserve that?
Eat, Pray, Love stars Julia Roberts as a beautiful, successful, (rich) writer with a loving husband and a great career. She then throws it all away when she realizes she's not completely happy with her life. See how long it takes you to figure out the source of her problems:
1) "I mean, here I am with a ninth-generation medicine man, and what to I want to talk about? Saving the world, helping starving kids? Nope. I want to talk about my relationships."
This line is the movie in a nutshell, and if you can't figure out why it makes me hate the character, that's probably because you wrote it. Julia Roberts plays a shallow, self-obsessed, deluded woman who thinks she's god's gift to the world. How they ever thought to cast Julia Roberts in this role is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/julia%20roberts" target="_blank"><img src="http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/lilbran/julia_roberts.jpg" border="0" alt="Julia Roberts Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
"Meeeeee."
"Meeeeee."
Her brilliant plan to achieve true happiness (as opposed to all that materialist garbage that only passes for happiness in the dumb, McDonaldized West) is to live abroad for a year without working, sampling the local wine and culture, first in Rome, then India, and finally in Bali. Oh, if only more people knew it was that simple! I'm not going to come out and say this movie hates poor people, mostly because they don't even exist in this universe. It's like they're beamed away by the sheer happy whiteness radiating from Ms. Roberts' teeth.
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/julia%20roberts" target="_blank"><img src="http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/lilbran/julia_roberts.jpg" border="0" alt="Julia Roberts Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
"Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
"Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
2)"Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face."
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First Julia Roberts has to discover that she's in a loveless marriage. She asks her friend's advice on whether she and her husband should have a baby, and this is the answer she gets. You know, maybe it's not all Julia's fault that she's so vapid; I mean, if this is what passes for 'advice' in her friend's mind, Julia probably hasn't heard a rational string of words put together in years.
But no, let's run with this idea. The following are ways in which having a baby is sort of like getting a tattoo on your face:
1)It's always, always a mistake, and you will regret it instantly.
2)In tribal New Zealand, it symbolized that you were a particularly dangerous form of cannibal.
3)A Belgian girl once sued a guy for giving her one without permission.
3) "Hello, God? Nice to finally meet you."
"It's me, Julia." Oh come on, you wretched screenwriter, you can't give us two thirds of the cliche and then puss out at the last second. It's odd that in a movie where the word "Pray" is 1/3 of the title, this is the first and last time we will ever see Julia Roberts praying, and it's apparently also the first time she's done it in her life. God doesn't answer, but she also makes it back from India with both her feet, so maybe miracles do happen.
4) Husband: "I don't want to go to Aruba." Julia: "I don't want to be married."
This is how Julia Roberts announces to her husband that their marriage is over. I am not taking this out of context: that's the whole exchange. Have I mentioned that her character is kind of a bitch? Her husband has trouble accepting that she would file for divorce without even trying to discuss what was wrong with their marriage, and yeah, he's got a fucking point there. Hilarity ensues at the divorce proceedings when he spells out in detail all the ways in which this makes her a goddamn lunatic, and I don't know how anyone expects us not to be on his side when we got to see the whole thing for ourselves.
5)"It's unnerving when a total stranger sees you clearer than you see yourself. That's what I meant when I said you were short."
Have I mentioned that Julia Roberts is kind of a bitch? Context, by the way, does not help this line: Julia Roberts saw an actor, James Franco, onstage, then saw him offstage, then immediately called him short to his face. I guess she was trying to unnerve him? Is that what this means? Here's a project: try speaking to stranger like this, and then mail me all the teeth you lose so I can pour them into the director's mouth while he's sleeping.
Then she sleeps with James Franco, by the way. Do you all just love her yet?
6)James Franco: "If you stay, we'll go out for Indian every night." Julia: "You never asked me to stay."
So what the fuck was that first line, Julia? Imagine this exchange between a gunman and a hostage negotiator: "For the love of God, Sol, please, please put down the gun!" "You never asked me to put down the gun!" *BOOM*
Let this be a lesson to you, James Franco: when a woman has just dumped her loving husband for no reason, and openly mocks you as a substitute for saying hello, she might just be a heartless bitch.
So with that, Julia's off on her whirlwind adventure of eating, praying, and loving like an intercontinental ballistic missile of smiles, self-indulegence and privilege!
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/julia%20roberts%20smile" target="_blank"><img src="http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k79/csande47/julia-roberts-baby.jpg" border="0" alt="smile Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
7)"You American girls. When you come to Italy, all you want is pasta and sausage."
One of the little charms of this film is that every so often a character will call Julia Roberts a self-absorbed **** right to her face. The old Italian lady who delivers this gem gets further points for denigrating not just her, but all the spoiled, rich women she represents, who I have to figure are this film's target audience.
Julia just smiles that duck-billed grin of hers, because it's been established that yes, in fact, that is the only reason she's in Italy. She treats this as a gentle ribbing, not as a representation of how much contempt these people actually generate everywhere they go. Scenes like this make me think that this might be the most subtly subversive film ever made, except that it's not. This film has less respect for foreign cultures than the smallpox virus.
8)"I'm the luckiest girl in the world."
Fuck this stupid woman.
<a href="http://s932.photobucket.com/albums/ad163/j_gallag/?action=view¤t=Julia.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i932.photobucket.com/albums/ad163/j_gallag/Julia.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
9)"Is there anything in the world more skinny than a teenaged Indian boy?"
Hey-o, racism! You're right, there is nothing skinnier than a teenaged Indian boy... except maybe a Somalian on a low-carb diet!
The film gets away with this line because it's spoken by an Indian girl, who's distraught because she's being forced to marry one of those skinny Indian boys against her will. In other words, she's about to enter a loveless marriage. Julia Roberts reacts to this news by giving her absolutely no advice whatsoever, even though this is literally the only situation in which Julia Roberts could plausibly be helpful. Not even a simple "I know what you're going through." Nothing, because this is still all about her somehow.
10) "How does she do it? She looks like Mother Teresa!"
This is in reference to a character whom Julia Roberts spies in the lotus position, serenely meditating in a Hindu ashram, just like Catholic nuns always do.
11)Julia: "I imagined you looking at each other with love and kindness. It seemed very real." Indian Girl: "Thank you so muc, Liz. That helps me believe it as well."
Did I say Julia offers nothing to the betrothed Indian girl? Scratch that: she offers her condescending, saccharine, utterly meaningless happy thoughts. And the poor girl eats up. If this is what passes for marriage counselling in India, it's no wonder half of Indian marriages end in a puddle of gasoline.
This is the "Pray" part of the film, so I guess we need to talk about that bullshit for a second. You know why I don't like this movie? Because it's porn for stupid aimless losers. The idea that the secrets to life's mysteries can be unlocked by visiting some Eastern temple and hanging out with white-bearded mystics is a myth invented by white people. Third-world people may not know the secrets of happiness, but step one for most of them seems to be getting the fuck out of the third world.
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/refugees" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/dd407/zakamohas20/Somali_refugees_in_Ethiopia_123648.jpg" border="0" alt="zakamohas somazakamohas somazakamohas soma Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
Pictured: Enlightenment.
Pictured: Enlightenment.
I'm not pissing on the idea of taking off to some foreign locale for awhile to drink and fuck strangers. That's half of the reason we invented sea travel. So I guess what I'm saying is, focus on that if you're ever abroad. Because if you spend all your time in some filthy temple eating bad food, scrubbing floors, and thinking about the sound of one hand clapping, eventually you're going to realize that you still don't have any answers, and that old Buddhist guy has been staring down your shirt this whole time.
12) "God dwells within me. As me."
Deep, huh? Actually I think Julia might have been ad-libbing here.
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/julia%20roberts" target="_blank"><img src="http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb170/MELCARMICHAEL/Julia_Roberts.jpg" border="0" alt="JULIA ROBERTS Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
"I'd really like to thank myself."
"I'd really like to thank myself."
13)Old Balinese Guy: "You, you, you!" Julia: "Me, me, me!"
Priceless, no? I like to imagine that there is no context to this line, and when Julia is travelling she just greets strangers by gushing "Me, me me!" at them. Sadly, this is when she is back in Bali, talking to the same medicine man she met earlier. She proudly informs him that she has returned to Bali, just as he prophesied, and that she ended her marriage, just as he prophesied she would, and she is now here to serve him. Regrettably, we don't see him gaping in horror at this news, probably because he can tell that she'd take a reaction like that about as well as a woman who threw her life away because an old Balinese man told her to.
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/gun" target="_blank"><img src="http://i383.photobucket.com/albums/oo276/Hellhound6989/Enoch/coltm1911texasah3.jpg" border="0" alt="Gun Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
14) "Thank god for Brazilians."
This is the sum total of the film's romantic advice. So this is Julia's lesson to you, ladies: when in doubt, fuck a Brazilian. This film relies on ethnic stereotypes so heavily it set the civil rights movement back 190 years.
You know, I just thought of a much better title for this movie: Binge, Purge, Fuck a Brazilian.
15) "When you set out in this world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping Tutti."
And now we come to the moral of the film. Tutti is the name of a poor Balinese girl with a single mother, and it's an Italian word she learned that means "everybody." Julia, shocked at finally running into a disadvantaged person during her extensive travels in Italy, India, and Bali, persuades her rich friends back home to pitch in and buy this woman a home. Tutti and her mother react to the news by jumping up and down and dancing, while Julia Roberts smiles in beatific glee at the joy she has been able to bring to these little people, and therefore, somehow, to "everyone."
And that's the message: be self-absorbed, be shallow, be wealthy and self-indulgent and don't worry about what others think. God dwells within you, as you, and you deserve everything you have. It's all okay, because sometimes, when you set out to help yourself, you can be impressed by a cute brown-skinned waif long enough to pull her family out of homelessness. You'll feel so good, it'll be like you really are god! And don't you deserve that?
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/julia%20roberts" target="_blank"><img src="http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/lilbran/julia_roberts.jpg" border="0" alt="Julia Roberts Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
"Youuuuuuuuuu."
"Youuuuuuuuuu."
Last edited:
for sharing this review. They keep showing this film on cable and I must confess something dark inside me almost made me watch it but now I know to avoid it like an ancient plague. 
J
