We watched the movie the other night. I thought it was very good. Gilbert is an excellent writer and I wondered how this book would do as a movie. I have discussed book-into-movie with several classes and found that my take on the comparison is not typical of others. To me, the one may inspire the other but they are very different things: print can easily describe thoughts and totally interior feelings while movies tend to be attempts to show things that represent if they can't actually show something important. The story of "Eat" is essentially prelude to India, India and post-lude to India. In the book, the writing about her India stay ranks among the best I have seen anywhere on the subject of meditation as a tool for self-discovery and self nourishment but this is the sort of internal topic that is very difficult to describe in words, much less depict externally in pictures and sequences of scenes.
Because I was so taken with the book, I noticed when Gilbert published a later non-fiction book. It is called "Committed" and is subtitled "A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage". Our viewing of the movie of "Eat, Pray, Love" went hand in hand with a movie we saw the night before, called "Arranged", the story of two young Brooklyn women teachers, one conservative Jewish and the other strong Muslim, both headed into marriages arranged by their parents. Between that movie, Gilbert's serious difficulties with marriage, and the review notes for her book on marriage, I found that the subject has lots of power and meaning for women worldwide that it normally lacks for most men. I see that a woman's power and freedom can be enhanced or severely reduced by the nature of her marriage and her husband. The notes on "Committed" say that Gilbert looks at marriage and its history, including aspects of marriage that I didn't know about, such as limited time marriage in medieval times and present-day Iran. I will get to "Committed", which I have now, but I am enjoying re-reading the India section of "Eat, Pray, Love" first.
