Disability On Film: What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Lasse Hallström brings his unique sensibility for finding the whimsical and bizarre in the everyday to this tale of a dysfunctional family in small town America. Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) is the family’s bread-winning member, who must deal with an autistic brother Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio), two immature and squabbling sisters and an immobile mother in mourning for her husband.

For the time it was made (the early 90s), Gilbert Grape offers a fairly nuanced take on autism, as translated by an extraordinary performance from DiCaprio. Many will question casting a neurotypical actor as an autistic character, but Hallström’s film has a big heart and that most clearly comes across with how Arnie is treated by his loving family.