Even as a spectator, I can't help feeling suffocating despair for Gilbert: a mother who is too fat to move, a brother who is not neurological, a sister who is cunning and ignorant, and a sister who works hard. Gilbert's only two friends don't seem to be in tune with him, and chatting together is often a conversation between chickens and ducks. Gilbert and Mrs Carver, the wife of the owner of the insurance company in the town, have maintained an underground relationship for nearly a year, but Mrs Carver's boldness has put a lot of pressure on Gilbert. But Gilbert is another young man who yearns for freedom. He met Becky, a girl like the wind, which seems to have brought a little starlight to his life.
Gilbert and Becky watched the sunset together. He craved the feeling of freedom, but the price he paid was that his brother Arnie froze in the bathtub overnight; Tower and was detained by the police. It seems that as long as Gilbert looks at the different sky for a little while, the trivial life and the responsibilities that he has to fulfill will mercilessly drag him down and slam him to the ground. This is the most desperate thing.
But fate still let Gilbert go. After the death of Mrs Carver's husband, she moved to St. Louis, lifting Gilbert's moral burden; under the influence of Becky, Gilbert's mother finally made up her mind to make some changes, and she went upstairs to the bedroom with difficulty but firmness. Go to bed, lie down and die after a while. The move signaled that she was starting a new life and told her four children to take courage. After the death of the mother, the four brothers and sisters burned down the house where the mother and her had been living in order to preserve the last dignity of the mother, and they have lived a new life since then. Gilbert and his younger brother got into Becky's camper van. They should have gone to many other places and seen a lot of different skies.
Imagine what the story would have been like without Becky, without the death of Mr Carver, without the death of Gilbert's mother. The Gilbert family will continue to live that life, connected with each other because of their family, but never feel happy and relaxed, and live a life of stagnant water.
So for the Gilberts, life really was elsewhere.
At the end of the film, Gilbert's mother told Becky that she was not like this before, and Becky also replied that she was not like this before, and the two smiled at each other. There is no immutable life and immutable sky, it is important not to forget how to move. That said, "living elsewhere" makes some sense.
View more about What's Eating Gilbert Grape reviews
