Johnny Depp for Pentecost

It was a couple of nights before The Day of Pentecost. This day, which was not so very long ago celebrated as Whitsun, passes by almost unnoticed, even in some churches. The liturgical calendar is fading from our collective memory. My family had decided we were due for a film night to mark the end of half-term, (no one mentioned Pentecost;) so while my eldest daughter was having her braces fitted at the orthodontist, I looked in the library for a DVD.
“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” is an intriguing sounding title and I knew my daughters would be thrilled with anything featuring Johnny Depp; they were not disappointed. Gilbert Grape lives in Endora, Iowa, population 1,901, “Describing it,” says Gilbert, “is like dancing to no music… It’s a town where nothing much ever happens, and nothing ever will.” The film’s opening shot, is of a long, straight, empty road sloping down and then up toward a flat, low, horizon. Gilbert is waiting by the wayside with his mentally retarded younger brother Arnie, for the annual arrival of long distance travellers in their camper vans. That it seems is the highlight of Gilbert and Arnie’s year. It’s not just this dull neighbourhood which is “eating Gilbert,” however, nor even his brother’s condition; it’s his family’s unresolved past. His mother had been the prettiest woman in the neighbourhood until his father was, “hung out to dry” seventeen years ago- (he hanged himself in the basement). Now she is thirty six stone and has become a virtual recluse which inevitably makes the bored local population all the more intrigued. She lies on the family sofa like a beached whale and when she moves, which is rarely, the timber floor creaks and groans under the strain. Eventually Gilbert’s friend helps him to put some supports under the floor-boards, which I suppose is a metaphor for how the family treat their own shaky existence. They live with it rather than confront it or seek to change it. A story such as this needs an “inciting incident” to tilt the even balance of the plot and create drama. This is provided by the arrival of a mysterious, beautiful, girl called Becky, with her Grandmother in one of the caravans passing through Iowa. Some sort of engine trouble impels them to stay longer than intended and Becky, who is like a breath of fresh air in the stifling summer heat, becomes Gilbert’s lover and ultimately his salvation. I won’t spoil it by giving away the details of the plot, but let me just highlight a couple of images from the film which made an impact, and got me to think about The Day of Pentecost. The first is that long road leading in and out of Iowa. Gilbert and Arnie wait there again at the end of the film. It’s one year later but this time they are planning to take off with Becky and her grandmother in their caravan, to explore the highways and byways beyond . When Arnie asks his brother whether he will be able to come along, Gilbert says: “We can go anywhere we want. We can go anywhere.” The image of the long, empty road disappearing towards the horizon had been like a symbol out of a Samuel Beckett play at the start of the movie- a symbol of futility; the road to nowhere! Now that same shot of the vanishing point on the horizon was pregnant with the notion of arrival, departure, moving on, and change.
The day of Pentecost began with waiting, too. The disciples were all together in an upper room when the Spirit blew through it like a tornado, propelling them out to the ends of the earth to preach the Gospel. Moreover, the image of the disciples huddled together in the upper-room on that day reminds the reader of how those same disciples had gathered behind closed doors, paralysed with fear, following the crucifixion of Jesus just days before. In both the film and the Biblical stories we are being shown how the bleakest landscape, or the most apparently confined space can be transformed by the power of love.
The second image in the film was of the family house all in flames. This is done deliberately by Gilbert for a good reason which I shall leave you to discover for yourself. Again the sight of the wild, wind-fuelled fire gutting the old timber house against the darkening sky is profoundly symbolic, and the director makes the most of this sequence. Gilbert and the family are no longer willing to prop up the past with its sadness and shame eating away at their life at home; they have come to a place of cleansing and a new beginning, which can only be effected through fire. This recalls the coming of both the wind and fire at Pentecost described in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Fire is sometimes profoundly destructive, but in both these cases there is something inspiring about the orange blaze which erases the past with its darkness and decay and ushers in a new dawn with a fresh horizon. This idea is beautifully captured on film as the image of the fire at night dissolves into a close up of Gilbert’s face against the grey scudding clouds of morning. He is purged and transformed over night, and thus the next shot of the open road which ends the film is now full of bright hope. “What’s eating Gilbert Grape is a marvellous film for any time of the year, but I particularly enjoyed it at Pentecost.