reflective and somewhat cynical beginnings

It seems somewhat cliche for me to begin this project after viewing the lighthearted summer movie, Julie and Julia. After all, the story chronicles a year of blogging, cooking and soul searching for Amy Adam's character Julie Powell. But I think I'd like to use this fluffy film to rethink the "hopeful" message of the movie. And hopefully this critical and undeniably biased look into our world of film, divided into "first," "second," and "third" cinemas (not to mention the infinite divisions reliant on economic and marketable genres), will begin to deconstruct our preconceived assumptions as film audience members.

I begin with Julie and Julia, a movie of little to no importance. The film is the typical "uplifting" tale of new beginnings, and driven attitudes, solidly grounded in one defining factor: food. Though the story attempts to parallel the lives of infamous chef Julia Child and down-and-out cubicle worker Julie Powell, I'd like to argue the entire story collapses on itself through the utterance of a single soothing doubt. I will not bore you with a recollection of the bland parallel plot, rather I'll skip to the climax. The end of the film (which I'm about to completely destroy you), seems at first to be the typical happy ending, promising book deals for all and happy smiles among friends and family. Yet the piece I absolutely could not ignore, even as Meryl Streep's smiling face drew the film to a close, was the heartbreaking moment shared just moments before by Julie Powell and her husband Eric. In then end, Julie's blogging endeavor leads to an infinite slew of book deals finally giving life to her broken dreams of being a writer. But amidst these happy and predictable messages lies a single phone call that brings together our two characters. The message is one of distain for our hopeful writer; Julia Child has nothing but sour thoughts for her delightful homage to the infamous name. In fact, Julie Powell never receives recognition from her idol, never meets her and only has those few comments through a faceless voice to understand Julia's thoughts on her endeavor. Instead success, according to the film, is purely economic, stressing the joys of financial payout for hard work. As much as this thought begins to spoil the uplifting and message of our two female characters, it is the words of Julie Powell's husband Eric that destroy my own picture of our deluded happy tale. In an effort to comfort his dejected wife, Eric stresses the importance of Julie's own picture of Julia Child in her mind. The woman she related to for the last year of her life, as envisioned through her recipes, was in fact the more important role. But what does this mean for our own vision of Julia Child? What we've been watching is an unbelievably positive portrayal of the famous chef for the last two hours! How do we as an audience member thus come to understand our own happy vision versus that unseen reaction to Julie's work? Julie Powell's relationship to Julia Child is one of fantasy, contrived through her own effort to generate hope amidst moments of self-pity. Is film's parallel version of Julia subject to the same criticism? Can we really believe that these two "unbelievable" stories are in fact "based on a true story?" I guess as a viewer I saw this moment as a huge red flag, calling attention to the fact that our conceptions of reality are entirely skewed by our own hope. Yikes. Who knew that despite the happy smiles of my pliable fellow audience members, the film in fact leaves me with the taste of gelled meat in my mouth. It is not an uplifting tale of two strong women, searching for dreams, rather a depressing look at the pathetic filter hope creates as it skews the vision of dreamers in our modern world.

I wish I had more to contemplate about this film, but it seems to have destroyed my dreams.