Elizabeth Gilbert's ground-breaking, best-selling book, Eat Pray Love, the basis for the new movie with Julia
Roberts and Xavier Bardem, shines through the film version. Luckily, we don't get a watered-down Hollywood adaptation
of Gilbert's profound insights and wonderful writing. What we get is just marvelous, as far as it goes.
I
resisted the book for a long time, which almost always means, in my case, that there are uncomfortable truths therein. Eat
Pray Love is about the hard work of personal transformation. The movie delivers the message -- and yes, Virginia, all films
are not merely escapist entertainment -- with a sweetness and simplicity that quite frankly amazed me, jaded mature movie-goer
that I am.
Special kudos to the director, Ryan Murphy. The actors were all good, which
is not unusual for good actors. As a writer, however, I always feel that the writing comes first, without which, after
all, the actors would have no script upon which to project their talent. But it's really the directors of a film who
bear the burden of artistic creation. In the case of Eat Pray Love, the emotional honesty and willingness to bear witness
to the painful and inevitable human condition of loss was highly unusual. Finally, I kept thinking, here's a movie for
America's grown-ups (predictably derided by funny men such as Craig Ferguson).
Julia Roberts was
notable for her willingness to not always look glamorous. She even looks pretty funky in a lot of scenes, as she wades
through the pulverizing process of a long and painful divorce -- although to be fair to the film, she does it with panache
and a literal, loveable appetite for life. Never has eating pasta and pizza looked so . . . inspiring.
More
special kudos to Elizabeth Gilbert, not only for writing the book -- a huge gift to the world -- but especially for her unembarrassed
search for meaning in her life. Which to her means God. This is a big subject for a non-theistic bohemian Buddhist, but suffice
to say that Gilbert's approach is nominally non-denominational, at least among the theistic religions. She touts her East
Indian Guru's teachings on love and meditation, with which no one of any serious religious persuasion could really find fault.
In place of God, Buddhism would posit buddha nature, our indefinable, intrinsic, infinitely
wise and compassionate true selves, not a being. (There are further, subtler and more profound differences but they're
not for a review column to expound on). Gilbert's words sound close to this definition when she describes a scene in
the ashram, in which Roberts' character realizes that "God dwells within you, as you." Rarely has a recent
movie conveyed such a simple and universal truth in so few words.
So now, apparently, some of our
highest esoteric teachings come from the silver screen. Appropriately enough, I suppose, since Eat Pray Love has the potential
to be seen by many millions of people of different beliefs all over the world. One can only hope it will help subdue the fires
of religious fundamentalism to reveal what we all share -- the deep and abiding desire to find our true selves and open our
hearts to each other.
As to what's wrong with this picture/book, from a Buddhist perspective, Gilbert,
like all of us, likes a happy ending. However, in order to renounce samsara, finally and forever, we have to accept
the fact that happiness turns to sorrow, meetings end in partings, and friends become enemies; it's just the cyclical nature
of things. While there's no such thing as permanence -- of joy or suffering -- as long as we're bound to the wheel of
samsaric life, there will inevitably be suffering, which was the Buddha's First Noble Truth. Only transcendence will
bring us true joy, which brings us back to meditation practice. So, yes, of course, let's eat, pray and love while we're
in bodies, but also not forget that there's more to spiritual practice than what can be gained through the senses.
