I mean, here I am with a ninth-generation medicine man and what do I wanna ask him about? Getting closer to God? Saving the world's starving children? Nope. I wanna discuss my relationship.
And then it happened. After months with the borrowed DVD "in hands", I watched it. There´re moments in our life, or nothing but random Friday nights, where the never happens. Not that I have said I would never watch it, but I had not even the slightest desire to do it. Last Friday, I did. The whole thing is that Eat Pray Love is not that bad as I expected and that´s the reason why I am here writing. The film itself is as foreseeable and poor as you can imagine - specially if you are Brazilian or knows the sonority of our Portuguese that well that Javier Bardem´s accent makes you want to kill Francine Maisler, the casting director - but, and maybe that´s just me, there´re good things you can get of it. I´ve been in a sort of inner journey as never before, so how and what called my attention, might have not the same effect on you. Also, I am pretty sure all its glories come from Elizabeth Gilbert´s book, so if you read it, what I didn´t, I am afraid that the film can be a null experience.
I have a friend, Deborah, a psychologist who was asked by the city of Philadelphia if she could offer psychological counseling to Cambodian refugees, boat people who had recently arrived in the city. Deborah was daunted by the task. These Cambodians had suffered genocide, starvation, relatives murdered before their eyes, years in refugee camps, harrowing boat trips to the West. How could she relate to their suffering? How could she help these people? So guess what all these people wanted to talk about with my friend Deborah, the psychologist. It was all ´I met this guy in the refugee camp. I thought he really loved me... What should I do? I still love him.
Yes, this is how we are. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. What I really like about Gilbert´s journey is how true it is. True in all its meanings. It´s easy to adopt concepts and to mouth slogans like the "The Physics of the Quest" as it´s easy to goes after a "searching for something" that, actually, covers an escapism. I don´t think Liz was in search of herself or a meaning, but escaping from herself, what can be seen in how she easily jumped into a relationship to another only changing the "costume", adapting herself to the "new" situation. How many times do we do that and not even in the relationship field? From being completely consumed with being the perfect wife and cook, fed up, instead of creating a real change, we only replace the "object" to chanting and meditation, fishing or whatever? That´s all part of a non conscious state. Sometimes it´s clearly visible to others, except to us, like Liz´s friend´s husband noticing how she looked like Stephen, the ex-husband, and now kind of look like David, the new boyfriend. "What I meant was, you know how people start resembling their dogs?" We can see amounts of this everywhere. Today I like politics, tomorrow, depending on the group or person I am with, I become vegetarian. We may think we did change inside, but we end up modificating nothing but the outside: statements, vocabulary, clothes. Even if the points of view are not the same anymore, they are probably reflections of something else, as volatiles as the air.
- I'm falling in love with you. - I'm not who you think I am. I'm just your fantasy. - No, that's bullshit. You're real. - Here's what he doesn't know yet. I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have it all. My money, my time, my body, my dog, my dog's money. I will assume your debts and project upon you all sorts of nifty qualities you've never actually cultivated in yourself. I will give you all this and more...until I am so exhausted and depleted the only way I can recover is by becoming infatuated with someone else.
You know, if you could clear out all that space in your mind that you're using to obsess over whatever it be, you'd have a vacuum with a doorway. It may not be a doorway, but if a film makes you think, and it doesn´t matter if it was made to entertain, that´s already something. (two and a half stars because of that)