Ari Lennox’s interpretation of Eat Pray Love tells a better story than Julia Robert’s film

 

'Americans know entertainment but don't know pleasure' – Luca Spaghetti

In the run up to the release of Ari Lennox’s second album age/sex/location, rapper and founder of record label Dreamville J.Cole, shared on Instagram a long message from the R&B singer, in which she describes the album as ‘my eat pray love journey’.

Always trying to understand every reference that I come across and looking for a movie to watch, I sat down to watch the 2010 film to discover what the phrase truly means.

Eat Pray Love starring Julia Roberts is based of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book of the same name. Unhappy in her marriage and questioning who she is and what she wants out of life Liz begins an international journey of self-discovery.


Still from Eat Pray Love. Credit:NPR.org

The Ryan Murphy written and directed drama film lethargically follows Liz as she travels across the world trying to define who she is outside of her romantic relationships.

However while on this journey, Liz is still heavily influenced by her past relationships with men. Her main reason for taking a trip to India is to visit the ashram that her younger ex-boyfriend, played by James Franco, taught her about. Unsurprisingly, she finds it difficult to connect with the source during mediation instead falling asleep.

What doesn’t help is the constant judgement of Richard from Texas(Richard Jenkins), whose constant jibes at Liz cross the line of tough love. From now on the only Richard I want to see Roberts next to is Gere.

Although Roberts brings her usual charm to the role she is unable to bring a spark of energy to the film. At the end I’m not sure if Liz truly finds herself or if she’s just going through phase like her ex-husband Stephen suggests.

age/sex/location album cover.
Credit:Amazon Music Unlimited


In terms of Lennox’s own Eat Pray Love journey, she makes it very clear from the album’s opening track POF that she has found her worth and can stand alone, ‘Independent, not dumbin' down everything that makes me grand’. The album then moves into Hoodie which sounds better within the sequence of the album than when it was released as a single. She then spends the rest of the album detailing the lessons from romantic relationships that brought her to this point in her life, to her Queen Space.

While Murphy’s film is long and drawn out, Ari Lennox’s album succinctly and beautiful tells her journey to self-love.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rock is the Worst Actor from the WWE

Image
Despite the joint second highest paid actor of 2019 being Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, the question remains if WWE superstars can successfully change paths and become great actors. I originally was going to discuss the idea that Dwayne Johnson’s acting career has been inferior to that of his former WWE colleague Dave Bautista’s , who is appearing in more films as of late, as I have found some of Bautista’s performances in films such as Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) to be much more enjoyable than The Rock’s blockbuster films like Central Intelligence (2016) . However; although Bautista has vocalised his desire to be an actor as opposed to just a movie star, both men are stuck in the roles of the muscular and powerful characters that they were in the WWE. Dave Bautista in his role as Drax, from the  Marvel Universe Johnson and Bautista have upcoming summer releases, Hobbs & Shaw and My Spy respectively, which see them taking on roles of “badass” government op
Read more

The real winner of the Internet's biggest boxing match: Ethan Payne

Image
On November 9th internet juggernauts KSI and Logan Paul fought in six round boxing match in which one point difference made KSI, real name Olajide Olatunji, victorious. Along with an unpredicted result, as both fighters anticipated knockouts, what was also surprising was the way mainstream media embraced the online world. Mainstream media seems to be embracing online content more in terms of entertainment as American late night TV shows have are often on YouTube's trending page. However, the relationship between the social media and mainstream worlds isn't as strong in regards to sport. KSI standing victorious after beating Logan Paul on November 9th. But for #KSIvsLoganPaul2 many mainstream outlets wanted to be a part of it. One of the main platforms that did this was Sky Sports Boxing. Not only was the fight made available on box office but also the London press conference was live streamed and was followed by many interviews from British social media star
Read more

What Sneako is missing…..

Image
  On the 20 th of October commentary YouTubers Aba and Preach uploaded a video in response to recently deplatformed content creator Sneako who criticised the Canadian’s for not making a video speaking out against YouTube’s decision to delete his channels. Earlier this month Sneako‘s two YouTube channels were taken down after the New York based creator received three strikes on his livestreaming channel SHNEAKO where the streamer posted red pill content, talked negatively about women including aggressively simulating sex towards youtuber Chad Chad. Aba and Preach aren’t the first content creators Sneako, real name Nico Kenn De Balinthazy, has expressed discontent with. In late August the 24-year-old had an argument with KSI, Britain’s biggest YouTuber, on Twitter because Sneako was upset that KSI was celebrating Andrew Tate, fellow red pill content creator, being banned on  all popular social media sites. Andrew Tate and Sneako shaking hands. Credit: @sneako What it seems that S
Read more