FILM AS TEXT ESSAY
            
             "Say thank you Gilbert, say thank you." Gilbert does indeed have a lot to be
            
             thankful to Becky for. In Lasse Hallstrom's 'What's eating Gilbert Grape?' we see a
            
             range of production techniques used to show us just where and why Gilbert is thankful
            
             for and some of them are: the way Becky built up Gilbert's self esteem, made Gilbert feel
            
             that he could go anywhere and meliorate his relationship with his corpulent mother.
            
             When we first saw Gilbert we observed that Gilbert is a very demure person, the
            
             fact that he says nothing much about him when he is introducing his entire family
            
             members proves this. But as the movie progress and the interaction between Gilbert and
            
             Becky intensify, we see Gilbert as a new person, a person with much more self-esteem.
            
             The relationship he has with Becky is what brought Gilbert to be a more conceit person,
            
             as they were talking in one of the many scenes they have with each other, Becky asks
            
             him: "What do you want for yourself?" before Gilbert answers, he takes a while to think
            
             what he wants for himself and that is significant because Becky has made Gilbert
            
             contemplate something for himself instead of things for others. As Gilbert answered the
            
             question the camera angle changes, instead of a normal shoot of Gilbert the camera kind
            
             of focused in on Gilbert and looking down on him, the reason for this shot is probably to
            
             show that Gilbert is thinking carefully what to say. One of the most important scene
            
             that's in the film involving the two is the scene where the sun is setting and the two are
            
             talking, not only is the 'rose colored' sunset at the background an breath taking
            
             experience for both of them but this is the first time that we see Gilbert smiles and that's
            
             all thanks to Becky's simple pleasure in life.
            
             The reason this film is such a success is the way it repeat its import...