Given what we've read and discussed about memoir in the last few weeks, how does Julie and Julia (the film) function as a memoir? Does it feel authentic? Does it have an appropriate scope? What common experiences are examined?
Post as a comment in class on 1/23.
Through class discussion we have learned that memoir’s are approached with a general theme or event at the center of the story and how a variety of other events are connected to make the main theme important.
ReplyDeleteIn Julie and Julia the basis of the memoir is about a woman named Julie who sets a goal to cook her way through Julia Chiles’ cookbook in a year and blog about the events. The central goal seems simple, but a series of events surround this goal to make something seemingly ordinary turn into an important event.
The film is authentic because it incorporates the events that led to the start of the blog, events happening during the blog and the outcome of the project. Julie is struggling with her career compared to those of her peers and knows she can do two things well: write and cook. A friend of hers is creating a blog, so her husband suggests she does the same by putting her two skills to use. These ordinary skills turn into a year adventure.
The scope of the memoir is very broad and although appropriate, I would have liked more about Julie’s cooking. This memoir movie did an excellent job showing the audience what Julia Chiles was like, how she learned to cook, the love she shared with her husband and a friendship with someone across the sea. Similarly, Julie had a loving husband, learned to cook from Julia, wanted to put her skills to use and had a friendship with those around her as well as her “friend” Julia.
Each character had similarities, which helped Julie connect with Julia. Through struggles of learning to cook, Julie strengthened her love with her husband, enhanced her self-esteem, finished a project, bonded with her friends and gained the approval of her mother as well as several readers never met before. By basing this memoir around an experimental cooking blog, the producers appropriately showed the changes in Julie’s life throughout the process while still focusing on the central theme of learning to cook. The simple theme was in actuality a very complex one, but the memoir presentation of the movie made this seem simple, light-hearted and fun with a sense of importance that the audience could connect with.
In class we learned that a memoir can be written by anyone, recognizes an important experience in someone's life in a way that makes it interesting for a reader who may or may not also identify with the situation, and focuses on the authenticity of the story (is it believable, is the author likable, is this a real person?). In Julie and Julia. Julie, the narrator, is a newly wed who is dealing with the struggles of coping with her settled life. This is identifiable to a lot of her audience. Very rarely does someone have the resources and ability to live out their absolute childhood dream, and end up conforming into the reality of their situation, eventually confusing “happy” with content. She uses her love of cooking, or Julia Childs rather, to tell the story of how she copes through her normal life, making simple stories like her trip to the grocery store or how she feels about the animal that will be potentially dinner for the night into entertaining chapters. The entire project, like all great movies, had its climax and disposition, inner conflicts, and resolution, initially almost ruining her marriage to living happily ever after and becoming a very successful writer.
ReplyDeleteI think the film Julie and Julia was a perfect example of a memoir. The film included personal experiences, descriptions, emotions, and senses of the main characters to give viewers a real-life experience with the cooks.
ReplyDeleteThe film felt very authentic because of its honesty and realness. The stories of Julie and Julia in the film felt authentic because they were presented in a way that was not ordinary; both stories felt like they were only real to Julie and Julia, not to any one else (although viewers could still relate to their stories).
I thought that the scope in the film was very much appropriate. The stories of both characters made viewers believe that if they truly wanted to, they could do the things that Julie and Julia had done in their life. Both characters began as ordinary people, and as an ordinary person watching the film, I too felt that I could accomplish anything I desired.
Cooking along to a classic cookbook, or writing an original cookbook for that matter, is possible for the average person and that was a very appropriate and effective scope for this film.
Many common experiences are examined in the film that the average person could relate to. Every self-proclaimed chef has had the tough experiences of making a recipe wrong, or not being able to find the correct recipe to make the perfect dish; while every writer has gone through the hardship of not feeling as if anyone cares what they are writing or not being recognized for what they are writing.
Julie and Julia both went through difficult times in the film, both as chefs and writers, and these common experiences were portrayed very well to the audience.
In my opinion the film Julie and Julia does effectively function as a memoir. I think it works because the way Julia is portrayed in Julie’s mind comes across as almost perfect. She looks up to her in every way not only just her cooking. But it differs from a biography because that isn’t necessarily the case when we see Julia’s life. She wasn’t perfect, but Julie’s mind kind of plays with the facts and makes Julia seem perfect. However, I did feel like it felt authentic, because Julie looked up to Julia and wanted to use her as an encouragement and a model of success that she wanted to achieve herself. I think if Julie would’ve looked into what kept Julia from being perfect she would not have looked up to her as much and therefore would not have as such a good role model to follow after. I think the biggest reason this worked, as a memoir is because of how much Julie looked up to Julia. To Julie, Julia was more than just a chef she knew a lot about like you would see in a biography. It was more to Julie she was an idol she wanted to be like.
ReplyDeleteThe most important common experience between the two women was their love for cooking and their experiences with food. The difference however is that in the movie is that we only saw Julia struggle once when all the men at the cooking school cut onions way faster than she did. That differs from Julie because we saw her fail time after time trying to follow Julia’s recipes. The other ways they were the same was their dedication. No matter how many times Julia’s book plans were altered or seemed to be hopeless she continued to work on it to get it published. Likewise, no matter how often Julie’s cooking turning into gigantic struggles she continued to persevere toward her goal of completing the cookbook in one year.
I thought that Julie and Julia functioned very well as a memoir. I thought the movie told a very authentic story about the lives of Julie Powell and Julia Child. It was a very interesting story which highlighted the highs and the lows of both of their cooking carers. I thought it had an appropriate scope of both of these women's lives because it truly went from start to finish of when they started cooking, and when they finally got publishing offers. I thought it was also appropriate to fill in gaps in the all encompassing cooking story with other details about their lives. Learning more about Julie's awful job and impossible new apartment made it easier to understand some of her highs and lows in her cooking, it was especially helpful in understanding why she was so driven to cook. Learning about Julia's move to France, her boredom, her relationship with her coauthors and sister also made Julia's story more relatable. I think that the movie functioned terrifically as a memoir. However some of the qualities that made it so great as a memoir, such as the length, made it less of a good movie. If a movie was trying to tell the same sort of story, but was purely fictitious, it would have likely left out many of the details from this movie and only kept the most important and entertaining parts. A few of the common experiences that Julie and Julia share in this movie are their government jobs, their new apartments, and their dislike of movie. Also, they both seemed a little bit alone with the exceptions of their husbands. Julie had a group of friends that she was growingly disinterested in. Julia wasn't able to really keep in touch with all of her friends because of her frequent moves but she did make new friends and coauthors in the movie. They both experienced frustrations and successes with their cooking and they both wrote books that were quick to become classics.
ReplyDeleteI really thought that this was a big help for the memoir just because there was a lot of it that you can see was truthful through out the movie. I really like the fact that Julie could relate here life in some ways to Julia child. She does a very good job of talking about her experiences with food and then trying them as Julia child did she wouldn’t put them in her book unless she had tested it first. I thought that this was really interesting. It was very easy to follow along with during the movie even though it did go between two different peoples lives but yet they were simi similar. However I didn’t understand in the movie with the job that Julie had how did she have time for the meals that she was cooking I didn’t think that part was very real because when she took that day off to make it again it seemed as though it had taken the time she spends at work normally to make the dish. Also in they where not a similar as Julie really thought because Julia never got that emotional though everything that was going on. She was a very happy person with everything that was going on in her life she would always see the brighter side when it came to food and also people where as Julie was the opposite she pushed her husband away because of food. Yet I did really like this movie I have seen it before and every time I tend to pick up on something new, which I really enjoy.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, a film can never really be a memoir, because it is, in almost every case, told in third person. Even if it is adapted from a text memoir, there is someone -- a screenwriter -- changing the writer's words to fit the screen.
ReplyDeleteSo in the case of Julie and Julia, I would say it functioned more as a dual biography than as a memoir, although there was one part that was very memoir-esque: Julie's blog. When we heard Julie doing voiceovers, narrating the scene with what she wrote about in her blog, we were seeing the picture unfold through her perspective and in her words, and that, I felt, was a memoir.
Overall I thought the film felt very authentic when focusing on Julia Child, but when it turned to Julie, I wasn't fully convinced. The tantrums and the fights between Julie and her husband felt contrived and some of the dialogue was not convincing.
This is my second time watching the film and I've noticed both times that the character of Julie is just not realistic enough. I know she is real, but there's just not enough background characterization going on to make me actually believe that a woman would get so invested in Julia Child and her cookbook.
Because so much time was spent bouncing between Julie and Julia, it seemed like we didn't get enough time to absorb Julie as a character. We knew her job and where she lived, but we didn't know much about her personality, beyond the fact that she whined -- a lot. Which, in my opinion, is not a good way to present a character, regardless of how authentic it is.
Some of the best parts of the film was the moments of common experience between Julie and Julia, when we would see (for example) Julie struggling to make an aspic, followed by the perfect mold that Julia created. It tied the two stories together well and, in reality, was all I thought was needed from Julia.
Yes, I enjoyed Julia's storyline, but I thought she was a better established character than Julie, and because the past storyline was so well done, it often overshadowed the present. It is very difficult to formulate a story with two equal protagonists, and I thought Julia would have better served the story as a secondary character.
Overall, I saw how the film could fit as a memoir, but it seemed to better fit into the biography category, as there were two protagonists and only a limited amount of Julie's own views. But, like I said at the beginning, I don't think a movie can ever really be a total memoir.
Julie and Julia worked as a memoir by showing the lives of two people: Julia Child and Julie Powell. The movie showed interesting parts in the two women’s lives where they both learned how to cook. It fits the idea of memoir because the film is truly split up into two stories (or rather two memoirs): the life of Julie Powell and the life of Julia Child. It goes through the women’s processes of learning how to cook French food and their reasoning to do so. The film goes through step-by-step of the successes and failures that these women faced as they learned how to cook.
ReplyDeleteFilms that are done by actors who are not the people that the film is about automatically makes me feel as though it is not authentic. It is nice to see the story of Julia Child done by Meryl Streep but since it is not Julia Child herself, it just seems like a story to me. I understand that what the filmmakers were trying to do (which was give it the memoir feel), but it just fell short for me. If anything, it seemed like more of a biographical feel because it was not actually the woman themselves in the film.
From what we have read in class, the film seems to work well with the facts and it was well placed together. I liked when parts of Julia Child’s life would be similar to what was happening in Julie Powell’s life and then the film would put the two of them together. The way that it did this almost “mirroring effect” really showed wonderfully how their lives often times had parallels. For examples, when both of the women started to learn how to cook lobster, it showed both of their experiences. Julia tried to “out man” the men by being fearless with the lobster whereas Julie was just trying to not feel bad for the lobster and just cook it.
James Roller
ReplyDeleteJulie and Julia the film functions adequately as a memoir, as far as Julie’s experience goes, but for Julia Childs, I don’t feel that it does. Throughout the film it seems like they tried to match Julie’s life with Julia child’s life. They filmmakers seemed to go out of their way to make it seem as if Julie and Julia Childs’s felt the exact same emotions and suffered through the exact same experiences. The way these experiences, thoughts, and experiences matched so perfectly seemed to perfect.
Throughout the movie every time the flipped back to Julia Childs’s story, it made me angry. Part of that was Merril Streep’s fake accent, and also that Merril Streep looked more like a man trying to dress like Julia Childs then the actual Julia Childs. The real issue I had was that Julia Childs’s experiences throughout the movie did not seem authentic at all.
Julie on the other hand was a very relatable character. Not only was Julie a relatable, but also her husband was a relatable character. I was easily able to relate to Julie’s husband. The to were just a simple upstarting couple like so many people we know in our everyday lives.
Julia and her Husband, seemed to have life much too much like a fairytale. Julia’s Husband was a United States ambassador, and Julia only became an icon in the food industry because she was bored and needed something to, and then happened to stumble upon her passion. Give me a break! The story may have some truth to it, but it sounds to be much to ridiculous to believe.
Julie and Julia feels very disproportioned to me. The scenes from the film featuring Julie Powell seem to be massively overwhelmed by the scenes with Meryl Strep as Julia Child. It may be that the locales in the flashback scenes or the grander scale of the events portrayed in Child’s screen time, but they seem to just overpower and downright outshine the Powell scenes of the film.
ReplyDeleteAs a memoir, Julie’s scenes in the film seem spot-on to the chapter of the Julie Powell novel that we read. The scenes feel very authentic to what the book was trying to portray, and I feel like this part of the movie actually works better as a memoir then that of the Child’s portrayed events.
The Child’s section of the film seems like a completely entertainment-based add-on to the film. The scenes don’t really feel authentic to me in that this is exactly how Child’s life was. This portion of the movie seems like it should have been the entire film or not included at all because of how much it outshines the aforementioned Powell scenes.
PS I hate the way that Julie’s husband eats, it drives me crazy to see people chomping away on food like he does!!!
The film Julie & Julia functions not exactly like a memoir but has qualities like one. The narrator is Julie, giving the movie that first hand character appeal. She speaks in first person, which reads like a diary in the sense that her inner thought is voiced. If it didn’t function completely like a memoir, the character development on screen takes away from the lives of the main character. The attention is now drawn away from the protagonists view point and creates a more story-based plot because we now have several characters with dialogue that we can’t help but to take into consideration as separate story all together.
ReplyDeleteThe film didn’t feel authentic as a memoir because I believe every story has a main character, so when Julie is narrating you over-look the fact that this is her memoir and just another main character in a movie. Themes of frustration were mentioned in both the reading and apparent in the film. The film illustrated the movie to be an obvious glorified version of the actual occurrences. It’s entire drive was towards developing Julie as a humble talent that suffers from set-backs but eventually pulls through it triumphantly.
Julie and Julia recalls the memories of Julie Powell. She is an average everyday person telling about her life. The film documents Julies life as she obsesses over the idea of food and recognition. We are drawn into Julies character and see her life from a very personal standpoint. We experience everything from marital fights to joyous celebration. The memoir uses food to ignite a connection between Julie and Julia, a novice with a hobby and a chef extraordinaire.
ReplyDeleteThe writing and movie feel partially genuine. Julies emotions and motivation are explicitly clear throughout. She seems to be a very typical, possibly depressed, woman trying to make everything work. We get a good sense of understanding that easily the woman could be pouring her soul into this blog, which has ultimately reached us. The obvious truth is that despite feel, the real story has most likely been slightly altered or at least formed by Hollywood into the final movie, which is fine because it doesn’t come off as overly apparent.
The scope of the feel also feels within reality. Julia Child may be a vast step above Julie Powell, but we feel an immediate connection between the two. This is mostly due to Julies obsession with her, but regardless it completes the story to be told. The emotions of the movie fall into very general shared experiences. We all experience love, relationship toils, and the gratification of a good meal. Many of us have some sort of excessive connection with something, Julia Child and food just happen to be the objects this story chooses.
I feel that Julie and Julia functioned as a good example of a memoir. The movie does a great job of going back and forth between both character’s life’s. It feels authentic as a memoir from Julie’s perspective because everything she does is being documented over the screen. We feel her joy and pain as she goes through Julia Child’s cookbook. Everything also feels authentic and real when we are given a glimpse of Julia’s life. It is easy to pick up the kind of person she is because her personality is depicted brilliantly. The viewer can feel how much she cares about the creation of her cookbook.
ReplyDeleteThere are many common experiences shared that the viewer can relate to. Everyone goes through a struggle in the work place. Whether you are flipping burgers or the CEO of a company, trouble is always bound to come your way at sometime. Julia Child showed that no matter how many people tell you that you cannot do something, there is always still a reason to try. When her book was denied from the first publisher, she did not give up on the rest. Just because one person has a problem with something doesn’t mean everyone else in the world will. Julie communicated to the viewers that you should do what you love. Regardless of money, if you are not happy with your career, you should drive your passion towards something you like to do. In her case it was writing. Julie loved to write, but instead of following her dream, she worked for the government. When she started blogging about her adventure through Julia Child’s cookbook, people really started to notice her. In the end she was offered so much more than she would of ever gotten from staying at her job.
The film Julie and Julia functions nicely as a memoir. In the film, the stories of both Julia Childs and Julie Powell are explained, even though the accounts are from different periods of time. The story of Julia Childs and her newfound passion for French cooking, which she discovered while living in Paris with her husband, is examined. The film goes on to tell the story of how she learned to cook French cuisine and then how she became apart of the French cookbook for Americans, which sparked her fame. Similarly, the film also tells the story of Julie Powell, who is in a state of discontent with her current life, where she works in a cubicle for a government agency. As her story progresses, she goes on to start a blog about cooking through the recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook. The film does a good job of display the significance of food in the lives of both of these characters.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the film feels very authentic. I like how it switches back and forth between the stories of Childs and Powell, intertwining them into one. I also feel that the actors and actresses did a good job of playing the roles of Childs and Powell. I feel like they capture the essence and passion of the two leading females.
In the film, both Julie and Julia narrate exactly what they are thinking and feeling as the plot progresses in each of their stories. That is what makes the film a memoir, the fact that not only are historical events presented, but also the feelings associated with those events.
ReplyDeleteThe film feels authentic because both actresses did a great job portraying their characters. As a viewer, we were able to get a sense of what the personalities of Julie and Julia were like in real life because of the great acting. Since the film was based off of the memoirs written by the real life Julie and Julia, the film was as authentic as anything could possibly be. I don’t know Julie or Julia personally, but after seeing the film I felt I had a better understanding of each woman.
The film did have an appropriate scope because it was able to bring the memoirs of Julie and Julia to the movie screen without altering the story. Meryl Streep not only looked like Julia Child, but everything from the way she talked to her mannerisms seemed to mirror the real Julia. They showed her living in Paris, and attending cooking school, and the relationship she had with her husband. Based off of the chapter we read in class, the movie didn’t seem to add or take anything away from the actual events that transpired. Same thing can be said for Julie. We saw her struggling with her job in New York, and starting her blog, and gaining fame as she went through Julia’s cookbook. Again, everything seemed to be in line with the memoirs.
The characters share many common experiences during the story. Both characters experienced scrutiny as they tried to find happiness through their shared passion: cooking. Both characters had loving husbands, as well as supportive families. Both characters ultimately found a career and success in cooking