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Gilbert Grape is a young man slowly wasting away in Endora; a town so dead that the arrival of a new fast food outlet is almost as exciting as the moon landing, and where the inhabitants while away their days sitting in diners, staring listlessly into space while life passes them by. ‘Describing Endora is like dancing to no music’, Johnny Depp drawls in this hauntingly expressionless voice; the voice of someone who’s got nothing to live for, someone who’s forgotten what it was like to feel passion or joy. But who can blame him? His house is crumbling around him, his mother hasn’t left the house in eleven years, he’s stuck in a shitty dead-end job in a grocery store that no-one shops at any more, and occasionally he gets to have depressing joyless sex with a married woman. But his world is suddenly turned upside down by the arrival of Becky, a kooky (but not in an annoying, ‘look i’m wearing ironic thick-framed glasses to disguise my total lack of personality’ kind of way) outsider who’s been to amazing places and done amazing things. She stops off in Endora when her caravan breaks down, and ends up changing Gilbert’s life forever along the way. Juliette Lewis is really lovely in this role, as the girl who teaches Gilbert to feel again; to appreciate the beautiful things in life instead of just letting them slip past. Lying in a grassy field watching the sunset. Going swimming with all your clothes on.  Near the film’s conclusion there’s a scene where Becky and Gilbert are sitting around a campfire and he’s talking about his father who never laughed, never smiled, never got mad, “like he was already dead”. Becky says, “I used to know a guy like that”, and they both smile because they both know who she’s talking about. And even though in the final scene, Gilbert ends up in almost exactly the same place as where he started from, waiting on the edge of the highway for the campers to come. It’s weird that most people seem to find Gilbert Grape a sad film, because I think that ultimately it’s uplifting. It’s full of lovely moments, the kind that make you start grinning from ear to ear like an idiot. That’s not to say that it isn’t heartbreakingly sad and painful to watch at times; but that doesn’t detract from the fact that it is, to use that horrible cliché, genuinely ‘life-affirming’.  Johnny Depp and Juliette Lewis both give wonderful performances, but for me, it’s Leonardo diCaprio’s performance as Gilbert’s little brother Arnie that makes this film really special. Most filmmakers tend to shy away from the subject of disability; probably because it’s hard to tackle without being overly sentimental or condescending. But the portrayal of Arnie and the way that his family interact with him seems to be an incredibly well-judged and honest study of growing up with disability; and the pain and joy that comes with it. The relationship between Arnie and Gilbert was unbelievably moving at times, and it reminded me a lot of Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show; an excellent underrated film, which gives a similarly sensitive portrayal of a child with disabilities. Gilbert Grape isn’t the sort of film which aspires to be anything profound or life-changing; it’s very low-key and understated and isn’t ever going to win any life-achievement awards for cinematography, but that doesn’t matter. Because it’s completely and utterly lovely. |
