Julie and Julia-two women and cooking-delightful as always!!

Julie and Julia
Written and Directed by Nora Ephron

My last blog has been about an Iranian movie viz. Cafe Transit. In fact a day after watching Cafe Transit, I happened to watch Julie and Julia.There is no doubt Julie and Julia is an enjoyable movie. But this blog is not to discuss or analyze Julie and Julia wholly. Rather, it is about an amusing discovery-the locus of both the movies rest interestingly enough in the same two ideas of cooking and women.

What in 1950, post war France, Julia Child sought as her tool for emancipation ("She desperately wanted to doooo something...")to fight the boredom of a expat's lonliness,is also chosen 50 years later by Julie, a struggling writer in Long Island City, at the rear top of a pizzeria, with an editor husband and a dull thankless job, she cannot escape. Quite astonishingly,somewhere in this timeframe, in some small corner of Iran, Raihan also seeks cooking as her sole tool to fight off the patriarchial control threatening her life.

All these women had one thing in common. They all had dreams of their own. Julia desperately wanted to do something in France. Julie Powell years later in 2002, had a government job, a doting husband, a bunch of snob corporate go-getters flashing their blackberries as friends, and still a penchant to do something she loves. A struggling writer, Julie too could find cooking (Julia's recipe) as her way of defying the dull powerlessness and drudgery of a city life. In fact she feels it much more relaxing to come and cook after a day's job, since the sauces and the broth gurantees a gastronomic delight, things are much more predictable and in her "control" that the rest of the stuff she is forced to do. Miles away in another geography, Raihan too finds that the only thing she can do is cooking and hence re-opens her husband's highway cafe. In a veiled society banning women only to the indoors, Raihan's emancipation comes through the dishes she serves out from her kitchen. The daily grinding of spices, tossing, garnishing with different colors and flavors seem to be her way of controlling her own life without the diktat of others.

No doubt Raihan's life is much different and even more struggle-some that the other two women. The men in the life of Julie and Julia are adorable, supporting and who only occasionally express impatience with their wives’ gastronomic obsessions. (Paul by arching an eyebrow, Eric by storming out of the apartment.)
However, still what strikes me is the common cord of cooking which unites them. Julie finds another life through cooking. She is smitten by Julia Child and her cookbook and vows to try out all her 524 recipes in 365 days. She starts blogging about her experience and soon becomes popular. Julie, undoubtedly as shown in the movie is overwhelmed with Julia Child's personality and the structure of the movie also shows two parallel story lines concerning these two women. In the vernacular of many American kitchens, Julia is an authority. However what appealed to me in Julie Powell's character is her love towards cooking. Being someone of the same age as Julie Powell today, and having a same hectic job, in the evening when i come back home and sit to write or read, it seems the dusty city has robbed me of any ideas. At that point i too feel like "doing something" which can be less intellectual but more enjoyable, which would make me feel powerful, make me feel as an effort of adding colors to my life, rejuvenating my soul. I had never been a great cook and in fact avoided cooking. Whenever hinted at the idea that cooking is imperative for a girl, I tended to stay away from cooking even more, may be enraged by the gender stereotypes. However watching these three women, i feel, cooking and kitchen is necessarily not an impediment, a tool to confine them from the greater going-ons in this earth. Rather for them it is their tool to forge freedom.
Julia is a diplomat's wife always on the move. She has a loving husband whom she has chosen rebelling against her conservative Republican father. Along with her husband's love she also has the constant challenge of adjusting to a new country with every transfer Paul Child (Julia's husband) faces. Paul is understanding of Julia's lonliness, yet it is Julia's lone struggle to give meaning to her life. Sympathetic, affectionate husbands often fail to realize that "to do something" for a woman means her screams to find "an existence, a life without the aegis or tag of anyone else".
Years later Julie Powell in a cramped flat, with a doting husband is suffering from the same pangs of void-ness. Ironically enough Julie "does something" which she does not like and cannot rid of. 50 years later Julie and her likes are no longer confined to kitchens as in the case of Raihan. Rather they have jobs out of their homes and which they cannot leave. Who has ever heard of leaving secured jobs/ What about the credit card bills, the rents, the shopping sprees, the blackberries... how can you then survive in this all encompassing material (mean consumeristic) world in Queens, New York (Long island city)Suddenly the stereotyped kitchen comes to Julie's rescue here. The Salad dressings, sauces, spices, sausages, amidst all these, Julie suddenly finds her motto in life, to cook something out of her apparently dull life and turn it into a delectable gastronomic delight.
Raihan too has no option. Her cooking sets her buoyant amidst the confines of her small kitchen. Raihan cannot have a job outside (unlike Julie). However being invisible in her kitchen she connects to the rest of the world which converges in her highway cafe, through the aroma of her food, the colors of her spices, the garnishing decking her dishes, through the succinct kebabs and the polos she serves out. And even Raihan's world is not deplete of sympathetic men. The kind Ojan and the Greek truck driver Zachario are compassionate to her.
Yet all these three women sort their lives in their own way, alone. And for the ingredient they choose is surprisingly the stereotyped,over hackneyed, thrashed by feminists "confines of a kitchen and cullinary skills" which sets them free of the dullness of their lives.
May be i should start learning cooking now.

I am sure all must have watched Julie and Julia.
Please make sure you watch Cafe Transit as well. (its an Iranian movie-can borrow it from Iran Culture house Mumbai)-I have a blog on the movie as well.
And in case someone is really doubting Julia's strain of having a diplomatic husband (since this has been dealt in a breezy light hearted way in the movie, kindly read Brigid Keenan's Diplomatic baggage- the saga of a trailing spouse of a diplomat-written in a very comic light hearted manner)