WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE (1993) *** I agree, you should be able to name a movie whatever you want to. It's a lot of fun to watch Johnny Depp and Leonard DiCaprio in these roles, irrespective of the movie. They're both obviously excellent young actors, with deserved reputations for being restless souls. So it shouldn't be as surprising as it is when DiCaprio slips straight into the autistic juggernaut of a screamer with perfect ease, while Deep appears slightly more challenged representing a semi-skilled youth sentenced to middle America. They're both great, you can't question Depp's affected casualness or insistence on removing himself from scenes (his hair dye is somewhat disconcerting, but so is most people's), but DiCaprio is just incredible. He's at least as good as Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, and you can't really say much more than that. His hand gestures, especially the involuntary ones, ring of absolute truth. Just flawless. Lasse Hallstrom stays out of the way for the most part, contenting himself to make sure that the sets look perfect (the interior of the house, the bedspreads, the couch), until you're settled into a good movie. Then he makes his move, suddenly jumping out in a cleansing unleashed to the perfect accompaniment of David Hartley's piano. There are a lot of issues on the periphery brushing against the aesthetic depravity of small towns in the Midwest, how that depravity is made complete by corporate America, and the general dictatorship of capital over the inhabitants (Kevin Tighe's collapse), but it's not a political film except for maybe in the personal sense. DiCaprio gets all the moments, but you can only take what you should from the film by closely watching Depp. They say that there's no problem too big to run away from (well, Richard Bach says Snoopy says that), and that should include the aberration of a small town. Depp's retreat is incomplete, and draws a line of finality across incomplete events.
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