Prior Film Experience

Prior Film Experiences

Throughout this summer I have sat down and watched a couple movies, those movies consisted of Good Will Hunting and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. I decided to watch these movies on Netflix because Good Will Hunting was recommended to me and then What’s Eating Gilbert Grape was just out of plain curiosity.

These movies were extremely captivating and I learned something from both of the movies. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is a very emotional movie, Gilbert (Johnny Depp) has a little brother named Arnie (Leonardo Di Caprio) that is different from other kids. He is mentally impaired. Yes, he was very different from most kids his age, he would even seek trouble most of the time by climbing trees or even climbing the water tower of their town. Although Arnie was different he was incredibly loveable and loved his older brother Gilbert so much because Gilbert was basically his guardian. Gilbert and his other siblings had lost to their father to suicide in the basement of the house they lived in and this caused their mother to go into a very severe depression where she became morbidly obese.

Their mother becoming obese restricted her to so much in her life where she didn’t leave the house, her children became the adults of the house and took care of themselves, their family and their home. The one who carried this burden the most happened to be Gilbert Grape himself. He worked everyday, took care of Arnie and did all the handy work around their home because he was now the man of the house.

Gilbert was restricted from many things in his life, he couldn’t really enjoy himself, and this became a problem. Gilbert became stressed out with everything that had been going on in his life to the point where he became very resentful towards his family, and tried to find happiness through a new potential love interest. Many things started to happen with his family, Arnie became pretty emotionally unstable, and things started to fall apart in their home.

How could things get better from here on out if their own mother wasn’t really their mother, but she was just another mouth to feed. Something drastic had to happen in order for their mother to take control of her life again and help her children. But what could it be? Arnie getting arrested and actually being brought to jail would seem to be enough to do that, and it was. When their mother was informed that Arnie had been arrested for climbing the water tower again, she managed to get up and go to the police station and get her son back into their home safe and sound.

This was a critical turning point in the film because Gilbert and his siblings actually felt like they had a mother again, they felt like they had someone that would be there and help them get through tough things in life. Their lives were beginning to move again, their mother was in their life again… But that didn’t last very long. A little while after their mother started taking action in her house hold, she couldn’t take it and it seemed like her heart couldn’t bare the activity and she died in her bed upstairs where she hasn’t laid in years.

Usually when someone dies the traditional thing to do is to call a funeral home and have arrangements for a wake and finally a funeral to say goodbye to your loved one. But what makes this movie somewhat interesting and maybe even odd, is that Gilbert’s family went about the situation very differently and took out many things in the house and then they did it. They burned their entire home to the ground. Why do this? Why burn the home? That was a really big question that stood in my head after finishing the film along a few others.  

Ultimately this movie taught me a couple things, it taught me that although circumstances could be rough in your life you can always find a way to make it work, even if that means you have to work twice as hard. Another thing that I realized from this movie is that depression can potentially have an extremely negative effect on your life and could even bring you closer to your death, like we see in this movie. This movie also shows you first hand, how to play the leader role in your family and household as we see here with Gilbert. This is a very emotional movie that you can potentially learn a lot from and I would recommend it to anyone.

What comes to mind when you hear the word janitor? If you’re being honest with yourself, you’re thinking of a man that may not present himself well, sloppy looking and probably a grouch. Well in the case of Will Hunting (Matt Damon) that’s not the case at all. Will is a janitor at MIT with a genius IQ. And he’s not a janitor at MIT to potentially get into the school, but yet he’s a janitor because Will seems to fail at life decisions and lessons and is constantly getting in trouble with the law.

How do we know that a person with these characteristics could possibly have the IQ of a genius? Well when a professor at MIT gives his class a difficult graduate level math problem and no one in the class can solve it, until one morning Will comes along and answers the problem and it’s correct. This then brings Will on a journey to make peace with his inner demons and be able to finally see what he is capable of in the world of math and education. Professor Lambeau took charge in Will’s life and saved him from jail time and in exchange to saving him from jail time Will had to report to a therapist, Sean Maguire.

This then opened the door to a whole new life for Will and gave him a chance to finally make peace with his inner demons, find out what he was capable of, and being with the woman he loved. After countless days of going up and down on an emotional rollercoaster Will finally got in the inner peace he so longed for. He went on his way and pursued a better life with the woman he loved.

From Good Will Hunting I learned that one has to go through what seems like hell to get to heaven, and that one has to overcome many heaps of conflict to be able to live the life that makes you happy. I believe that if someone has troubled as Will was able to overcome these obstacles and move forward into a better life, anyone can.