Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Eat-Pray-Love, the movie

When I read the book Eat-Pray-Love, I couldn't stop raving about it. This in-spite of the fact that I could never articulate why I fell head over heels for the book - it wasn't like it had a dramatic storyline... it didn't. For that matter, it actually doesn't have a storyline - its only a bunch of the author's travel experiences (to Rome, Mumbai and Bali) compiled together. I think the reason it fascinated me was because it drew me into the author's world and made me sense how wonderful such travel experiences could be.

Anyway, now its being made into a movie. Pretty sure it won't be half as good because the best thing about the book was its narrative and the very interesting tidbits of information, which is of course the hardest to translate on-screen :(. Saddens me much when a book I love gets made into a movie that doesn't capture its essence. Its not that these people don't know how to make good movies - they do! Its that there are certain books that *cannot* be effectively made into movies and such books should be left alone to live solely in their textual world, however popular they might be.

Talking about book-to-movie translations, you know what book I think should really really be made into a movie? Kalki, by Gore Vidal. Gripping storyline and super unexpected ending - that's all I can give you without letting you in on the suspense :). But I recommend you give it a read if you get hold of it.

2 comments:

Preetha Appan said...

I borrowed this book from you, I need to give it back we we meet next..:) I actually didn't understand the hype about the book.. There were a few very creative/funny observations she made in all three places that I really enjoyed, like the one about kids names in Indonesia (first, second etc). Other than that she seemed too self absorbed about her so called "problems". How many women really suffer in abusive relationships and can't get away while she gets a nice book advance to go roam the world and introspect on her failed marriage.. She should have set an enjoyment/fun tone to her writing, but instead all the self discovery and complaining about relationships stuff just seemed incredibly selfish to me. I wouldn't have had a problem with it if it set out to be a good travel book rather than this "finding herself" narrative that didn't seem genuine at all.

Harini Sridharan said...

I agree with you on the too-much-cribbing part... I didn't like it either. What made me love it were the travel experiences... the whole thing about taking off for a whole year just to experience places and people.

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