Remember when Johnny Depp was an actor? He used to do so much with one certain key expression, a blank stare and a sudden shift of his eyes that somehow equally conveyed being irked and your mind suddenly getting blanked. It is something from the legacy of silent comedy, harkening back to Chaplin and Lloyd. No wonder he did a Chaplin bit in Benny & Joon.
We’ll see a great deal of this expression in 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Depp, as the titular character, has a great deal eating him. There is his morbidly obese mother (Darlene Cates) who has hasn’t left the house in the seven years since her husband hung himself, and who has become the stuff of local legend, a mythical creature the townfolk are dying to catch a rare glimpse of. There’s his affair with housewife Mary Steenburgen and the self-loathing resulting from that.
But the biggest hindrance is younger brother Leonardo DiCaprio, who is severely autistic. He is also about to turn 18, and the events in this film take place in the days leading up to the grand birthday party planned for him. Depp lives by one rule and that is nobody hurts DiCaprio. Unfortunately, it is very hard to keep his brother from potentially hurting himself, as DiCaprio is hellbent on climbing the town’s water tower, making a beeline for it at every opportunity.
All this takes places in a dying, small town that Depp compares in voiceover to dancing without music. But he has to stay there to take care of his brother and mother, as he is too big-hearted to leave sisters Laura Harrington and Mary Kate Schellhardt with the responsibility. Actually, I would have been tempted to burden the latter with it, as she is the one of the most continuously angry characters I have seen on film. That said, she gets a great laugh in one bit by playing the trumpet, and quite badly, while slowly raising a middle finger to Depp.
One highlight in the life of DiCaprio is a curious procession of Airstream trailers which goes past the town on the same day each year. This isn’t explained, so I don’t know if there is some kind of Sturgis, only for vintage trailers. Anyhoo, this year finds the truck of Penelope Branning and granddaughter Juliette Lewis conveniently break down, leading to a clumsy romance between Depp and manic pixie dream girl Lewis. At least, Lewis’s part used to commonly be described in such words. I’m not sure if that term is regarded as proper anymore. And Lewis will have to move on eventually, but it seems everything is conspiring to keep Depp where he is. As he tells her: “We don’t move. We’d like to, but my mom is pretty much attached to the house.”
Depp is worried Branning will be able to successfully repair the truck engine, taking Lewis away from him. He’s worried the small, family-owned-and-operated grocery he works in will be unable to compete with the new, shiny Food Land supermarket and be forced to close. There’s Steenburgen’s husband (Kevin Tighe, whom I best remember as his menacing character from Lost), who keeps nearly catching her and Depp in flagrante delicto and keeps insisting Depp come to his office for a “chat”. There are the police threatening to take away DiCaprio if he climbs that tower one more time. Even the family home is in danger of collapse, though Depp’s friend John C. Reilly appears to do a decent job of shoring it up.
Reilly’s character is amusing, and it is interesting to see him earlier in his career than I have seen him before. His character welcomes any and all new developments that may come to the town, waxing enthusiastically about pre-fab buildings and salad bars. Of the former, he is excited to land a job about the Burger Barn which will be coming to town, watching it literally doing so as a preconstructed unit atop a flatbed truck.
A third friend in the group is Crispin Glover, in a role closer to portraying a human being you might encounter in the real world than any of his other screen appearances. Still, he is the town mortician, so he does get some latitude to employ his unique skill set.
There is much to enjoy here, so I won’t say much more about the plot. Some of the developments are pleasant surprises and other feel like contrivances. The drama is a bit heated, and it is no surprise the characters are watching 50’s melodrama Terminal Station on TV in one moment. The often sparse score tends to push the more emotional scenes over the top, but does so by being a bit too tasteful and restrained. It is the opposite of overbearing, but with the same effect. I wish “underbearing” was a word.
Typical of such movies of the 90’s, it is rather quirky while still grounded in reality, an aspect of the production which once again has me thinking of Benny & Joon. There are elements here like the family bringing the dining room table to Cates instead of the other way around. In one scene, a car is so loaded down on one side that it is completely lopsided as it heads down the road.
Balancing out the wackiness is some drama which doesn’t pull it’s punches. One line that stuck with me is Steenburgen telling Depp why she chose him, when she could have had any man in town: “I knew you’d always be there. You’d never leave.” A much longer batch of dialogue firmly lodged in my mind, though too long to relay here, has Lewis asking Depp what he wants, and she observes of his reply that everything he listed was for others, without anything for himself. His wish for himself is to be a good person.
Even the set dressing is rather convincing and has odd details, such as Steenburgen and Tighe’s house still having a home stereo which has an 8-track player built into the console. For some reason, I feel that commitment to kitsch foretells the career of Wes Anderson.
The performances are solid across the board, but it is definitely Depp’s show. DiCaprio is astonishing in the only time he would play such a character, yet I still often felt I could see the actor behind the performance. Lewis is the best I have seen her, as I don’t recall ever being convinced by her performances in anything else I have seen her in. Cates is especially noteworthy as a woman trying to maintain some measure of dignity even when she is aware of her considerable girth.
One scene I want to call attention to has Depp startled at work by first Steenburgen and then Lewis. Both of these encounters are with the women on the other side of the aisle, through a gap in the cans he is stocking there. His reaction at being startled each time is priceless. Also, the scene immediately brought to my mind Double Indemnity, when Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck meet covertly in a supermarket. How odd things would have been been if MacMurray had been given the opportunity to react as Depp does in that movie, however inappropriate that would have been in that noir.
I was pleasantly surprised by What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? The time spent with these characters was enjoyable, and I found myself genuinely concerned about their well-being. I didn’t believe every plot turn and event in it, but I was along for the ride just the same. There is only one question I had after finishing it and that is: why does the ladder on the water tower reach all the way to the ground? Seems a lot of trouble could have been avoided by not making that so readily accessible.
Dir: Lasse Hallström
Starring Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen
Watched on blu-ray