Grapes of Ill

Portly.  Rotund.  Curvy.  Big-boned.  Voluminous.  Obese.  No matter what aphorisms we assign, sometimes only obese fits.  In Lasse Hallström’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Johnny Depp’s character Gilbert is strongly affected by his mother’s eating disorder.  He comes to resent her because of the responsibilities that her gluttony places on him.  Gilbert has to be the parent, financial supporter, handyman, and nanny for his family, especially for his younger, mentally retarded brother Arnie. Throughout the film, Gilbert experiences numerous emotions regarding his mother and their way of life, showing the chasm, as Susan Sontag describes it, between the kingdoms of the well and the ill—and the shame that accompanies the latter kingdom.  Hallström accomplishes these dynamics through several images and dialogues between characters.



What's Eating Gilber Grape DVD cover.
Photo from pricecanada.com



While we may not consider it this way, the living can be split into two categories, which Susan Sontag, the late essayist, novelist, and playwright, explains in her essay, “Illness as Metaphor”:  “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship.  Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick” (Sontag, 3).   This “night-side of life” plays into the film almost immediately.  What’s Eating Gilbert Grape begins with Depp’s character Gilbert and Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Arnie waiting at the side of the road for the annual parade of RVs to coast down the hill and through their little town on its way to more exciting places.  Immediately, Hallström establishes Gilbert as a resident of the kingdom of the well and establishes Arnie as a resident of the kingdom of the ill through their interaction.  Arnie asks Gilbert a series of questions, which are answered with weary, slightly patronizing answers on Gilbert’s part.



If the procession of RVs represents the multitude of possibilities for Gilbert, our introduction to his mother Bonnie makes those opportunities seem like pipe dreams.  During the film, Gilbert shows his love interest Becky the Grape house from a distance.  It is just a black geometrical bump on the horizon, but Gilbert comments that it is nothing compared to the humongous woman inside.  But this is not the only image Hallström uses to portray the disgust Gilbert feels for his mother.



The house in which the Grape family lives was built by the late Mr. Grape, who hanged himself in the basement, and it is now falling apart bit by bit.  Gilbert, the family handyman, fixes what he can, but he has to ask his friend Tucker for help when the first floor starts to sag because of Bonnie’s weight.  Tucker goes down to the basement alone while Gilbert keeps watch upstairs for Bonnie, presumably because he does not like to be in the place where his father died.  From Tucker’s perspective, we look up through the floorboards to see Bonnie Grape moving slowly on the first floor.  With each step, the floor creaks crankily.  Bonnie might be part of the land of living—although most likely not of the well—but sooner or later, she is bound to fall through the floor into the land of the dead, or at least into the kingdom of the ill.  In this scene, the floor and Gilbert’s refusal to go down to the basement symbolize the divide between the two kingdoms of Sontag’s essay.

While Gilbert may love his mother enough to not want her to find out she has weakened their floor, he does not respect her enough to keep her from being on display.  While Tucker is working on the basement, a few kids from town run up to the house, trying to get a view of the fat lady.  In jest, Gilbert lifts one of them up so he can see in the window.  He runs back to his friends, screaming, “I saw her!  I saw her!”



During a touching moment with Becky, Gilbert reveals how he really feels about his family:

BECKY:  Tell me what you want as fast as it comes to you.  OK?

GILBERT:  OK.



BECKY:  OK, what do you want?  Faster!

GILBERT:  OK, I want a new thing.  House, I want a new house for the family.  I want a—I want Momma to take aerobics classes.  I want Ellen to grow up.  I want a new brain for Arnie.  I want…

BECKY:  What do you want for you, just for you?

GILBERT:  I want to be a good person.



Only at the climax of the movie, when Arnie is arrested for climbing the water tower, does Gilbert finally come to accept and to sincerely love his mother.  Arnie is Bonnie’s “sunshine,” as she calls him, and when she finds out her son has been arrested, she leaves the house for the first time in seven years to bail him out of prison. When the family emerges from the police station, half the town appears to be watching them—to be watching Bonnie.  Children playing in the grass stare up at her girth; housewives stare in shock, probably hoping they never swell to her size.  The next day, at Arnie’s birthday party, Gilbert goes to his mother, who once again will not leave the house, and promises never to hurt her again.  He has always acted this way toward Arnie, promising to look after him and defend him, but this is the first time he has put her eating disorder aside and come to care about her.  In doing this, he bridges the gap between the two kingdoms from “Illness as Metaphor.”



Still, Gilbert does not give his mother the respect she is entitled to as a parent—however neglectful a parent she may be—until her death that evening.  Motivated by her meeting Becky, who neither stares nor laughs at her, Bonnie makes the journey up to her bedroom.  She presumably has not been to the second floor of the house in years, and the climb is difficult for her due to her weight, but she makes it to her bed and asks for Arnie, who finds she has passed away in her sleep.  “It’s going to take a crane to get her out,” Gilbert tells his sibling. 

“There’s going to be a crowd,” his younger sister Ellen realizes.  “I just know there’s going to be a crowd.”  So, to keep his family from being embarrassed, and to honor his mother, Gilbert has everyone help him empty the house, which he then sets on fire.  While this may seem disrespectful, it saves his mother’s name from being soiled any more by her size.



Hallström represents illness in this film as something of which to be ashamed.  Gilbert, who just wants “to be a good person,” is even ashamed of his mother.  It is only when she has passed that we see, in the final scene, that Gilbert can take hold of the possibilities waiting for him.  What’s Eating Gilbert Grape ends with Gilbert and Arnie joining Becky in her RV as it sails down the hill like a ship of hope.  As her RV comes, Gilbert delivers these lines:  “Amy got a job offer to manage a bakery in Des Moines….  Ellen can’t wait to switch schools.  Arnie asked if we were going to go, too.  I said, ‘Well, we can go anywhere, if we want….  We can go anywhere.’”



Through dialogue like this and through images such as the people staring at Bonnie, the small house on the horizon, and the divide of the basement and first floor, Hallström conveys illness as a inhibiting kingdom, something that holds others back.  Gilbert has to learn to love his mother, to respect her, and to fulfill the jobs required of him.



Works Cited

Depp, Johnny, Juliette Lewis, and Mary K. Schellhardt, perf. What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Dir. Lasse Hallström. 1993. Paramount. Web.

Sontag, Susan. "Illness as Metaphor" and "Its Metaphor". New York: Picador, 1989. 3. Print.