What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
Rain is the most idiotic name for a girl possible, I can’t believe Woody Allen thought up that name. But even though I wasn’t a big fan of the movie (why not anyways?), the actress was memorable enough and I was amazingly surprised when I recognized her. She always talks the same way though, no matter what kind of role; is that a bad thing though? Woody Allen himself does the same thing.
She is not the only character… Except for the mother and the sisters, I feel like I have seen every actor in the film somewhere else. I looked them up and saw that most of them were in many insignificant movies I have sort of seen in the past – now ho weird is that?
“I want to move away.” I wish Gilbert had said that when he was asked about what he wants. I think that he is a lovely character who is more than just a one-dimensional good person, but Arnie is definitely much more interesting. Leonardo Dicaprio is surprisingly great in this role, oh my God. I mean… how the heck is it possible that he was this cute at 19 years? Normally I don’t like the depiction of actually crazy people in movies, especially because I don’t know much about how they behave, yet I cannot imagine that they would do a good job in a Hollywod movie. Nevertheless, I thought young DiCaprio did a good job and showed the right mix of loveliness and annoyingness for me to enjoy the film.
More than anything else, I think that the movie is an unexpectedly nice slice of life film. A few things are happening, but not really much, and more than anything else, it’s a character film and not very easy to watch. The environment is depressing, Gilbert’s life is more than depressing and it seems like spending your whole life caring about nothing but other people is possibly the most tragic thing in the world.
Unfortunately the tragedy also comes with a huge amount of kitsch, especially in the scenes with “Rain” and Gilbert… The scenes with Arnie are much better, and at the end of the film, the amazingly sappy music didn’t bother me as much anymore. There was a certain beauty to it.
It’s too bad the music doesn’t perfectly complement Sven Nykvist’s wonderful cinematography by turning the thoughtful shots into kitsch.
Somehow I can’t say that I truly enjoyed watching the film; for that, the film was just a little bit too sad without having a cartharsis function like “Au hasard Balthasar” did. But I am glad that I have finally seen this film that I have always meant to see ever since “Titanic”. (You know how back tthen, the magazines were all like “Leo is actually a good actor, just watch ‘Gilbert Grape'”?)