"What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993) - Movie Review

“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” was suggested, rather strongly recommended from my friend SK when I was in college. He watched it over the movie channel and he could not wait for me to see. Well, he could not wait and hence pretty much recited the story. I managed to watch it in fragments in those coming days. And a film is never complete until it is endured its duration in a viewer through its form of continuity and blend of happiness, sorrow or tragedy.

It of course is about Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) in a town called Endora. A town where an opening up of a burger joint is considered a “breath of fresh air” as the owner puts it in their grand opening day. Slowly but surely burying under the sands of corporate giants such as “Food Land” (Wal Mart for real world) is Lamson’s Grocery where he works. His mentally challenged brother Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio) is turning eighteen; his elder sister Amy (Laura Harrington) takes care of the house while his other sister Ellen (Mary Kate Schellhardt) is in the midst of her teens. Every body’s life is grounded to this place because their mother (Darlene Cates) went into a shock of nothingness when their dad died. “She is a whale” he says to his friend Tucker (John C. Reily) and she is. They make their dinner table and move it to the couch to have family dinner. He runs an affair with a married woman (Mary Steenburgen) with an emotional vacancy. This is his life.

With sadness as the rock he carries, he is calm and smiles. He helps a kid to look his mom inside his house. He knows what others think of him and his family. He has stopped caring but inside his house he does. He cannot tolerate the suffocation of things happening as though nothing is wrong. He deals with it in silence and routine. Depp in his early years shows Gilbert Grape desperate for some one to confide and cry out loud yet he cannot have the luxury to crumble. His yearly ritual with his brother is to watch the caravans of traveler pass by. That is his buzz for the year of staying put in Endora. He has a war and he knows there are no enemies.

And DiCaprio as Arnie riding so close to the line of not able to see this boy go through his day but rightfully handled is a performance that earned his Oscar nomination. In the daily chores of Gilbert, we see him struggle through it but surely accepting it for its reality. He loses Arnie every time who climbs up the water tank when Gilbert glances for some relaxation. One such relaxation comes in the form of traveler Becky (Juliette Lewis) staying at Endora temporarily with her grandmother (Penelope Branning) to fix their car. She sees Gilbert which others have gotten used to. The simple selflessness he does it with much ease and peace with himself draws her to him. And the very sight of a traveler in his world is enough for him to talk with her. In the sense he does not talk much as he bottles up everything to him. He hardly has any emotion which we come to know later with Becky about his father.

And as Gilbert’s obese mother Darlene Cates slaps everything about the people’s stare on strangeness on external appearances. The human instinct is to stare at deviance but some one concentrating and getting entertained on it is a disgusting feeling to witness. While one self might not care about this, it is the pain of her/his loved ones enduring that and that hurts due to the failure to eradicate the problem.

Lasse Hallström direction is patient. The focus on the main characters is a common thing but to pop up the supporting roles in places to be graced upon is casual on a heavy film. It sees through a single man getting his weight on his shoulders increased day by day and he just smiles at the unmerciful act of life. But he has loving sisters, an affectionate mother and a brother who is a cute dictator of his emotions. In this family who gives everything towards a disabled brother brings laugh on the acceptance of one’s stature from other’s point of view and painfully heartbreaking in the people crushed by their limits of patience. A novel written by Peter Hedges is the one I want to read in order to see how well he wrote it to picture it over the screen.