Journaling is, by nature, a solitary exercise. We write our most intimate secrets in the pages of our journal, so it isn’t every day that we can share the experience with others. It’s refreshing when we find a movie that portrays the journaling life.
1000 Journals
In 2000, a San Francisco-based artist named Someguy decided to conduct a collaborative, creative experiment by releasing 1000 blank journals into the world. He started with his immediate surroundings, giving them to friends and leaving them in places around his city. As word spread about his project, strangers began to email him asking him if they could participate. He sent journals to people from around the world and they, in turn, shared them with more friends and strangers. In 2003, journal No 526 returned to Someguy with fascinating and diverse entries. In the documentary 1000 Journals, filmmaker Andrea Kreuzhage goes on a mission to find the other 999 journals and discovers a world of shared creativity and expression from people across the globe.
Bridget Jones’s Diary
The film Bridget Jones’s Diary, based on the popular novel by Helen Fielding, is a glimpse into one year in the life of Bridget Jones, a woman in her early thirties who is single, self-conscious and searching for success in her career and love life. Bridget starts writing in a journal on New Year’s Day as a way of pursuing her goals and getting a fresh start on her life, and throughout the year, we witness both entertaining fiascos and important steps in her personal development.
Freedom Writers
Freedom Writers tells the true story of recent college graduate Erin Gruwell (portrayed by Hilary Swank), who begins teaching English to at-risk students at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California shortly after the L.A. riots. Erin discovers that other adults in the education system have written her students off as “unteachable,” but she uses journaling as a way to teach them about literature and allow them to talk about the hardships and challenges they face. While they read The Diary of Anne Frank, her students write about their own experiences living in a war zone, struggling with gang violence, juvenile detention, family problems and drug abuse. The students of Room 203 named themselves the Freedom Writers and published a book called The Freedom Writers Diary.
The Motorcycle Diaries
The Motorcycle Diaries is a film based on the journal (which was published as a memoir posthumously) of the 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara, who would later become the famous Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. The film tells the story of his 1952 journey, partially by motorcycle, across South America with his friend Alberto Granado. During his journey, Guevara encounters poverty and injustice and finds himself transformed by the people he meets.
Eat, Pray, Love
The highly anticipated movie version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s popular memoir Eat, Pray, Love (starring Julia Roberts), opens this August. Still reeling from a painful divorce, Elizabeth goes on a trip of self-discovery to Italy, India and Indonesia, writing copiously in her journal in each place. She battles her demons of depression, loneliness and doubt to find her own path to happiness and love. Here is one excerpt from the book: “I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression’s lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too.”
Are there other movies that you love that portray journaling in a positive way? Share your favorites in the comments!