Sunday, I finally convinced the hubby to for the successful new film Julie & Julia.
First Impression: Good (Great? I'm so bad with praise) movie.Why? I absolutely loved Meryl Streep here, her uncanny voice, and addictive awkwardness which (I'm going to have to gather because, frankly, I've never heard the voice of Julia Child, to my memory) must surely be a dead-on impression of the magical woman. In all honesty, Julia, if this IS accurate, reminds me of said hubby, who was being very quirky and fabulously awkward the entire weekend. So it could matter who is sitting next to you (slouched in his seat, fiddling with a pair of Ray-Bans like a baton twirler from Britain's Got Talent. Ok, so maybe not quite like that...I digress.
Verdict: See it. Theater-viewing optional. It's a perfect Saturday afternoon flick to get you motivated to cook something delicious for dinner. Actually, you probably DON'T want to see this movie UNLESS you have time to cook afterward. It's that appetizing (can I even say no pun intended here, is this a pun? Help me Englishy people out there...)
Reservations: My only issue with the film is based off my background. I'm a writer, so books-come-movies always are a difficult genre to, um, swallow. This spring I had, coincidentally, bought off a rack of "$4.99 Bargain Books" the first 2005 edition Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (which I have to say has the most hideously bland yuppie cover for such a multi-faceted narrative...bad editor, bad, BAD!). I later discovered a book was being made about the film, and vowed to read the book before the movie, in case anything was going to get "spoiled" by the film (how many freakin' food metaphors can I accidentally use here...another post surely). And oh how the film spoiled so so much.
Poor Julie looks like every aspiring writer, aspiring cook, aspiring wife, sometimes even aspiring ADULT. One friend, C., who didn't read the book ask, "What was the whole point of the story, though?" Exactly.
First Words Out of the Theater: "I'd be pissed if this was the movie that they made out of my book. She comes across like such a whiny bitch." Such a departure from the at-times-tear-inducing Julie Powell of the book.
Ultimately my beef is with the marketing of this film. You think, oh, it's a movie version of the book. FALSE. It's a combination of TWO BOOKS, Julie Powell's memoir, and Child's autobiography, My Life in France. So of course Julia steals the show. You can't put a budding NY writer up against the tour de force that was Julia Child. And especially never can you cast Meryl Streep without full knowledge that her character will not be overshadowed by, no offense, a newcomer.
And frighteningly I just made the connection that this isn't even the first time Amy Adams and Meryl Streep have shared a screen (2008's Doubt, also starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, also recommended). That's how much this movie has dazed me!
There's an A.V. Club review that point out the same problem, but I'll take it a step further. Maybe I didn't see the narcissism, since Julie Powell comments on her awareness of blog-as-self-idolatry. It just seems so damnable to criticize someone who already beat you to the punch with self-criticism.
Wishful Revisions: What do I wish the movie really portrayed? Powell's memoir is more than just a cutesy romantic-comedy blog. I was really struck by the metaphor of what's missing. Julie doesn't have the sense of direction all her friends seem to have. The memoir is her finding of inspiration. But Julie works for an organization that deals with the fallout from 9-11, and the conference room looks out over "Ground Zero."
In my eyes, it's a subtle post-9-11 narrative told through the eyes of a woman who may or may not realize that she's being so universal. I wanted to see THAT type of collective literary catharsis, the connection on the screen of food and soul and loss and being lost. I wanted JULIE to shadow Julia, the real triumphing over the mythic. Ephron's film to me is a Bifteck Sauté Bercy that's missing the marrow and the rich, meaty, intensity of a "life, well lived" (Powell's description) that deeply richens the original memoir.
I thought I'd share part of an old poem of mine that seems a fitting close...
I remember after the funeral, playing hide and seek
with my brother, and crawling under the bed finding, alone,
my grandfather’s reading glasses. Surely, they could have only
fallen from his face as he collapsed, here, beside the bed. It was
too much of the past to stomach, like a funeral banquet grander
than any wedding feast because the caterer knows we must
always fill ourselves against a loss: the meal itself, a new story,
the first bite an opening line repeated like a chorus for hours.
from "Doggerel"
© 2009 Lindsey Gosma Donhauser
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