What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)

USA, 118 minutes
Director: Lasse Hallstrom
Writer: Peter Hedges
Photography: Sven Nykvist
Music: Bjorn Isfalt, Alan Parker
Editor: Andrew Mondshein
Cast: Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Darlene Cates, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, Laura Harrington, Mary Kate Schellhardt, Crispin Glover, Kevin Tighe, John C. Reilly

At the time What's Eating Gilbert Grape came out late in 1993 I thought the best part of it was Leonardo DiCaprio's performance as a developmentally disabled teen. DiCaprio was not even 18 then—the same age as his character—and it's still pretty remarkable, a pastiche of honking voice, spastic gestures, and the bold willingness to do it. In fact, this picture (and another released earlier that year, This Boy's Life) convinced me DiCaprio had a remarkable career ahead of him. I'm not sure that's what ended up happening, though I suspect others would disagree, but in any event he's had at least one good performance as an adult, in The Revenant, among way too many more "nice try" turns. Has he ever again thrown himself into a role so un-self-consciously the way he does here?

Seeing Gilbert Grape again recently, I was more impressed by what a strange beast the movie is—a feel-good tale in its approach (note the constant soundtrack cues) but dragged down by an assault of bleak plot points. It's a little depressing even in summary: Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) is a 20something systematically buried by life circumstances in his isolated and dying small hometown of Endora, Iowa. He works as a delivery boy in a grocery store that is losing ground to a corporate enterprise on the outskirts of town, "Foodland." His brother Arnie (DiCaprio) is developmentally disabled and requires constant care and supervision. His mother is morbidly obese and hasn't left the house in years (she is evidently the reference in the crashingly tasteless title). His two sisters are already gray, faded, and trampled themselves—we learn in passing that an older brother somehow got away. There's no question mark in the title because the movie is here to answer the question. This dim occluded life is eating Gilbert Grape alive.



Director Lasse Hallstrom established his career making ABBA videos and even a quick survey of his work shows willingness to go sweet and cute in the clinch. My Life as a Dog, from 1985, may be his best (if you don't count "The Winner Takes It All"), but Hallstrom is also responsible for the bad Chocolat (from 2000, as opposed to the good Chocolat, from 1988, directed and cowritten by Claire Denis). Yet the issues taken on here by Hallstrom and Peter Hedges, screenwriter and author of the original novel, are intense and even nuanced—psychological shame, to put the fine point on it, under the burden of disabilities and stigma as well as poverty and isolation and ... everything. Gilbert's sex life amounts to women who throw themselves at him—remember, this is Johnny Depp. But there's no satisfaction in it for him. He has nothing else. Gilbert is disconnected almost pathologically. In many ways that's merely the Depp mode, but it's deployed shrewdly here, and Depp may have cared more too, back when he was trying to break out of TV. Some of the ways Gilbert talks about his mother are shocking. And though he may show a lot of patience and affection for Arnie, those traits also have their limits.

After Depp and DiCaprio, the picture has a wide range of familiar cast support from established and up-and-coming players, including Juliette Lewis in her usual clipped and bitter style as Gilbert's love interest, Mary Steenburgen as an unlikely lonely housewife, and the character actors Crispin Glover, Kevin Tighe (aka John Locke's reprobate dad on Lost), and John C. Reilly. Like Dazed and Confused, also from 1993, the casting is often inspired and even a little surprising now in terms of who's here.

The bravest player, not surprisingly, is Darlene Cates as Momma. Again, the approach of Hallstrom and Hedges is somewhat bifurcated. They are sensitive enough to address obesity—there aren't that many movies that are up to even that, beyond this and 2009's Precious (which also has its flaws). But they aren't entirely able to resist the temptation to play it a little for laughs. A ludicrous necessity for retrofitting the family's house to accommodate Momma's weight is part of this story, and they have to do it without her knowing it because she is sensitive. A car she rides in is shown listing recklessly to the side. Both feel exaggerated, veering too close to sitcom material and playing to stigma almost cruelly in this context.

Similarly, does the last name "Grape" even exist really? Do you know anyone named Grape? Wikipedia knows of a couple people named "Grapes"—Sidney and Steve, both British—but the loudly distracting name is just one more aspect of this movie that seems self-contradictory to its own intentions. The alliteration rings too many ridiculous bells—my instinctive associations are along the lines of "Gorilla Grape" and "Goofy Grape." One appears to be a cannabis strain (not to be confused with Grape Ape), and the other is a powdered soft drink from the '60s, more famous for needing to abandon its "Injun Orange" and "Chinese Cherry" flavors for the obvious reasons. Watching this movie might be a bit like trying one of those drinks again—unexpectedly refreshing in some ways, perhaps, but gritty, not necessarily in a good way, and also too sweet.