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What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is an examination of one man’s struggle to achieve personal happiness while being weighed down by familiar obligations and co-dependence. Lasse Hallström brings together a gifted ensemble and a tender but tough screenplay to craft something of a minor classic. It doesn’t hurt that Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio are placed into the main roles – do they look like brothers? Not really, but they create a believable and lived in rapport that overcomes that obstacle. In fact, the main reason to watch the film is to see the two of them play these brothers and watch how they interact with each other.
It is primarily a character study, but the film does branch out into the wider scope of life in a small town. Details like the strip mall takeovers of America are handled with a nice touch of real, honest emotion and humor. The major subplot of frustrated infidelity gives Mary Streenburgen a chance to shine as she plays an unhappily married woman desperate to get out of the town and taking this anger out upon herself in a go-nowhere “romance” with Depp’s character. It’s a sad cry for help and reinforces the character’s struggle to get out of this town and remove himself from the co-dependency of his family.
And his family is a well-acted ensemble of actors who create a believable and lived-in unit. Darlene Cates as the obese, emotionally damaged and slightly manipulative mother creates a beautifully realized character. Her speech, late in the film, in which she apologizes for damaging her children due to her mental illness and emotional neediness then confesses to not wanting to be seen a joke is a sight of an actor laying out their truth, going beyond the character, acting and line reading to lay bare a naked emotion that is harrowing and touching in equal measure.
But Gilbert Grape belongs to Depp’s soulful eyes and innate romanticism, qualities which he frequently manipulates into grotesqueries (which is part of the fun of watching him as an actor). It’s nice to see Depp play a normal person, and he keeps Gilbert Grape’s various strands and tones afloat. And DiCaprio proved himself an incredibly talented actor at the tender age of nineteen (although he looks far younger). DiCaprio’s vocal tics and body contortions feel authentic to the character, but it’s the sly twinkle in the eye and intelligence that he keeps simmering beneath the surface that make his performance so extraordinary. So many actors treat characters with disabilities as showboating devices to prove what great actors they are at the expense of the truth and reality of someone in that situation, instead crafting a series of strange choices and calling it a character. Not DiCaprio. He never loses sight of the emotional truth of the person he is playing. And that seems like a great concise way of describing the film – tender yet emotionally moving, no one involved condescends to the situations or people. They’re treated with respect, careful observation and warmth.
