When it comes to the year of 1993 in American cinema, filmmakers looked deep into sensitive behaviors like autism and schizophrenia where they both featured Johnny Depp playing a pivotal aspect in the story. The best one of course out of all of these is Lasse Hallstrom’s drama masterpiece that should instantly get a release in the Criterion Collection, “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”, a true and authentic example of a relationship between a person with autism and a stress-driven, normal person where Barry Levinson challenged audiences before with “Rain Man” in 1988.

The film centers around of course Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp), whom is still devastated of his father’s death. This tempts to get emotional for him as he starts to not just to be aware of her obese, closely dying mother Bonnie (Darlene Cates), but also has to take good care of his autistic brother Arnie. Gilbert himself improves emotion when love and affection interferes his proposed direction when interacting with Ellen (Chicago’s own Mary Kate Schellhardt). Basically, the perspective on Gilbert is that there is a developing challenge for him to face in his life than can be fixed in just one way.

Lasse Hallstrom is one of these directors that know how to direct different genres despite never directing a horror film. There are many flunks he has made for sure like the recent “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” film he collaborated with “Jumanji” director Joe Johnston and “A Dog’s Purpose” (despite myself actually liking it), but there will be no harm when something beats his greatest achievement, “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”.

First of all, the character development when watching the film is absolutely raw and perfect from start to finish where it feels as believable as possible.

Arnie Grape is highly autistic and mental where his body language looks very high-octane and hyperactive. Now when I type the word “mental”, not every one of his characteristics describe mentality. He behaves very sweet and honest at times when interacting to people (especially when he is interacting to his mother), but there can be showings of mentality when there is a bump on the road in his brain when the film continues to develop.

To be honest, I think that Leonardo DiCaprio (at 19 years old) should have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor over the “still” villainous Tommy Lee Jones in 1993’s “The Fugitive” because like Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man”, he portrays a perfect, accurate look of a mental, autistic brother so well that Janet Maslin of The New York Times commented about him, “so startling and vivid that at first he is difficult to watch.” That is what a good performance should be.

Meanwhile in complete opposite, Gilbert Grape is a completely serious character where he is more focused on life aspects as well as being more mature than Arnie. He has a supportive and meaningful attitude towards Arnie like how Tom Cruise’s character is extremely portrayed in “Rain Man”.

Usually, you do not witness Johnny Deep in these intrepid and powerful roles (Finding Neverland, Black Mass) where he ignores his usual in his collaborations with Tim Burton, which would be to perform dark and delivering a gothic tone to the audience. Johnny Deep instead is more out of character and is definitely not holding his character back.

Family is probably the biggest and most important theme of this film because there is a strong, romantic connection between Gilbert and Ellen that not just has a strong effect on the Grape family, but also personally on Gilbert as well. There are several scenes where Arnie excitedly interacts with his obese mother where he shows a desirable love towards her that comes off as sweet.

“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” can be analyzed in cinema as experiencing the mental human conditions as well as dealing with that condition. Both Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio deliver their career-best performances in pure high fidelity like Levinson’s “Rain Man”, where many emotional twists increase through event after event.

Now, before I end this article, if Criterion is reading this, please release this on Blu-ray next year.

Grade: 10/10