What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Johnny Depp, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, Leonardo DiCaprio
screenplay by Peter Hedges, based on his novel
directed by Lasse Hallström

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's a cult following for What's Eating Gilbert Grape, but it's peopled by folks without the stomach for a genuine cult outrage. Trafficking in low-level "unconventionality," it's fatally done in by Hollywood bet-hedging and the searing banality of director Lasse Hallström–a man who could turn William S. Burroughs into Norman Rockwell apple pie. Despite the potentially traumatic nature of the material (parental suicide, morbid obesity, self-abnegation), the film plays like every other mainstream weepie, with its straight edge only slightly dulled by trace elements of eccentricity. It's one of those movies that works exactly as planned but bulldozes the implications that might make it less–or rather more–than stimulus/response emotional pornography.

Johnny Depp assays the title role, playing the man of the house to a family ennobled by the word "dysfunctional." Father committed suicide long ago and Mother (Darlene Cates) responded by eating herself to 500 pounds. Capping his predicament is mentally-handicapped brother Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio), who's highly rambunctious and in need of constant supervision. Trapped is the word for Gilbert Grape, even with regards to his affair with housewife Betty Carver (Mary Steenburgen), but neither Depp nor Hallström take him very seriously. Where the former registers no serious emotion despite his many trials, Hallström does one of those everyone-is-special jobs that renders the pain-stricken characters vaguely humorous. Conviction is nowhere to be found: the actor goes through the motions while the director is unaware of how to generate them.

DiCaprio, of course, managed to snag an Oscar nom for his "challenged" turn, and though it's purely a gimp role, DiCaprio pours his heart into it. Everyone else seems to have fallen under Hallström's soporific spell: when Gilbert finds love with travelling sprite Becky (Juliette Lewis), it has all the resonance of breakfast at Denny's, while Arnie's constant, dangerous scaling of the town water tower inspires about as much dread as an overdue library book. Cates's role is largely designed to have her sitting still and glowering, and Steenburgen is largely subdued. The material is paradoxically handled as something meaningful and no big deal at all–Hallström can't find his way inside it and thus uses externals viewed through a condescending gaze.

It wouldn't have required much to transform this into something wrenching–God knows that the characters have the baggage to grease the wheels of drama. But the movie barely registers, gradually descending from a minor rustling of leaves to a major chore to watch. It's one more movie that says that dullness is artistic integrity and quiet sensitivity when actually it's an attempt to stem the real damage of the characters. (Crispin Glover himself is dumbed-down into an undertaker whose peculiarity extends purely to his profession.) It's like hiring Jerry Lewis as a Bresson model–though Hallström is no Bresson, and What's Eating Gilbert Grape is no Pickpocket.

THE DVD
Paramount ushers the film to DVD for the second time in a Special Collector's Edition featuring a largely creditable transfer. The 1.85:1, 16×9-enhanced presentation is quite vivid, with juicy golden hues that shimmer. Although the high saturation occasionally swamps fine detail, it's not enough to seriously compromise the image. The Dolby 5.1 audio is predictably sparse and centred around the fronts, but incidental music pokes through the surrounds, as do minor amounts of ambient sound. Extras begin with a film-length commentary from Hallström and screenwriter/source novelist Peter Hedges. The yakker is more interesting for Hedges's discussion of writing his first screenplay: Hallström stays in the background, only intermittently interjecting practical info into the author's discussion of turning "nine pages [into] nine words." Hedges also serves as a massive cheerleader to the most picayune details, offering the greatest (if uncritical) insight on the track.

Meanwhile "The Characters of Gilbert Grape" (10 mins.) is less about the characters than about the actors, who offer their opinions of their roles and castmates. For what it's worth, Depp is clearly in Jack Sparrow mode in his footage and Hedges is back for more unironic gush; very little penetrating analysis is on offer. "The Voice of Gilbert Grape" (5 mins.) recounts the film from its origins as a university writing class project to the involvement of Hallström and Depp. It's emotional but entirely too brief to be edifying. Finally, "Why We Love Gilbert Grape" (7 mins.) sees the principals describing what they love about the movie; Cates gets teary-eyed over the scene where she apologizes to her children (she had done the same in real life), but otherwise, no surprises beyond the puzzling amount of awe for some very conventional filmmaking. A photo gallery, the trailer, and trailers for Reds, Titanic's 3-disc edition, and Failure to Launch complete the package.

128 minutes; PG-13; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; English subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Paramount