Review of Eat, Pray, Love

A glorious masterpiece of cinema, although not for the squeamish. The first 45 minutes are like a pastiche of Beckett's Molloy told entirely in pantomime. Then, after a 5-minute stretch in which Julia Roberts mouths a silent scream while slopping pig's blood over her naked body from a plastic tub, the film wrenchingly and unexpectedly shifts gears into science fiction, seemingly inspired by Tarkovsky in his Stalker period. And of course the score, by dischordant diva Diamanda Galas, is a shrieking, throbbing marvel. Indeed the only thing I didn't like about this aching examination of universal themes of loss and loneliness was how, seemingly every 20 minutes or so, we would suddenly get a high-speed car chase or action set-piece culminating in the gruesome death of a main character, until only Roberts (in a performance that must be seen, nay consumed as in the fragrant sacred fruit of the title) remains. Was there ever such a disjointed mix of art-house ennui and torture porn? Still, a timeless classic, a modern Trimalchio for the flute-and-balloon set. Do not walk, run screaming to see this unutterably poignant, oblique, haunting, limpid, trenchant, hysterical, action-packed, gritty, gut-wrenching and ultimately breathtaking film.