The life of this person... Lasse Hallström’s films are always distinguished by the fact that they often put too much pressure on complaining. His most recent work is Hachiko: My Most Trusted Friend. No, of course, his “Chocolate”, where Johnny Depp also played one of the roles, I really like, but for the rest of his films, I feel a certain skepticism before watching and a sense of dissatisfaction after.
Gilbert Grape lives in Iowa, a tiny town with a population of a thousand. He has two sisters, a feeble-minded brother and a fat mother. Gilbert pulls a strap in the store and has an affair with a married lady. But everything changes when a beautiful young woman named Becky comes to town.
The script of the film is too banal. There is nothing unusual here, and the last scene, which is supposed to remove the last tears from the person, also does not cause any effect on me. The whole film takes place in the rhythm of a certain social melodrama. The hero of Depp works in the store, trying to feed almost the whole family, including her mother, who has recently been in prolonged depression, and because of this she has become pretty fat. He still has to look after his half-witted brother. He is already completely tired of this life, he meets a completely free Becky, having watched her life, he also dreams that he would have everything like her. Watching Depp's adventures most of the time is very dreary, and not particularly interesting. It’s just like any normal person in this situation. The ending, of course, is a little unexpected, but nevertheless very logical. As the whole movie ran under the same slogan, so went to the final credits. Maybe the director wanted to show that the film as life, constant and monotonous? This is the first and last frame of the film. But, nevertheless, it seems to me that just the idea is already exhausted, although, on the other hand, what else can happen to Gilbert Grape?
The film gathered two Hollywood stars of the first magnitude, Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio, who were not yet particularly known to the general public, and DiCaprio is not known at all. He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. I don’t know, maybe deservedly, but I don’t really like his first roles. I don’t like the role of psychopaths. I feel the same way about Sean Penn in I Am Sam, where he also played an underdeveloped and received an Oscar nomination for the role. I don’t really like these roles in movies, in any actor, so I won’t say whether DiCaprio deserved to get the nomination or not. And Depp played as he played, did not create anything unusual.
The film belongs to the typical order of social melodramas. Nothing remarkable stands out. Absolutely average film, but, nevertheless, quite accurately shows the life of each individual person, who we are, because, you will agree, life is not particularly interesting thing, and sometimes just boring and dreary, as in this film.
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