The food was indeed almost indecently beautiful. And everyone was terrific. I didn't, didn't, didn't want the film to end.I didn't expect to like the other plot - the one about Julie Powell, the lost 30-year-old writer played by Amy Adams who finds herself by working her way through all the recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it. (I feel absolutely no solidarity with other bloggers!) But I did, and not just because she's married to a boeuf Bourguignon of a man. I didn't find the story of Julie Powell overshadowed by that of Julia Child, let alone a drag on it. Instead, I found myself (once the film ended) fascinated by how the two stories fit together. My conclusion: Julia Child is a kind of secular saint, and the film "Julie & Julia" at once a secular hagiography and a wise secular account of saints and their cults.
I'm serious - and I'm not even referring to the healing power of real food, the sacrament of film, and the cult of St. Meryl! The word "saint" is mentioned humorously in "Julie & Julia" (Julie calls her husband Eric a saint for putting up with her, until it grates on him - he may be a saint but doesn't want to be one) but the whole story is about Julie discovering her patron saint in Julia. Julie starts to dress like Julia Child (Eric helps, getting her a string of pearls), describes conversing with Julia while cooking and feeling she's there with her in the kitchen, and finally reports that Julia Child saved her. The film ends with a pilgrimage to the sacred shrine of Julia Child - the kitchen (from the television series) preserved at the Smithsonian; grateful Julie leaves a pound of butter with the guestbook under the icon.
But there's more. At least I think there is. What exactly is the relationship between the two stories we see? We see the start of Julia's story before the start of Julie's, but the story of Julia is conjured up by Julie's - the title of the film is the title of Julie Powell's book. I think the story of Julia Child's life we see is in Julie Powell's mind. It's the Julia Child whom Julie Powell believes in - needs to believe in, the Julia Child who "saves" Julie Powell. This Julia, seeking to lead a meaningful life
without a regular career and as a woman without glamor or children, saves the world through cooking. (She doesn't just change the world; she allows American housewives to participate in the sacred mysteries of cuisine, and so saves them as women, even or perhaps especially in our own reputedly post-feminist moment.)Was the real Julia Child as inspiring as Meryl Streep's Julia Child? Was she energetic and optimistic without being annoying, boisterous without being loud, a world-changer without pretension? Did she fill people with ecstasy through her very joie de vivre? Maybe so - though the film itself suggests otherwise. (The real Julia Child, informed of Julie Powell's blog, is reportedly "a bit of a pill.") But it doesn't really matter. For the real Julia Child - as saintly Eric says once he's survived the trying if tasty ordeal of his wife's novitiate exercises - is the Julia who saved Julie, "the Julia Child in your mind."
Hence secular hagiography, and wisdom - not skepticism - about what drives hagiography and the cults of the saints. We can see that people need and are saved by saints without supposing saints actually exist (though we can hope they do, without quite wanting to be saints ourselves). The fact that we who need saintly saving to some extent create the very saints who save us - our need makes them saints - in no way undermines the reality of the saving. If I teach my Saints class again, we're watching this movie!
