Heavy (1996)
A film review by David Cowen
Copyright 1996 David Cowen
There's a sad magic in the feelings one experiences in the simple act of touching another. A strange feeling of electricity or a thick feeling of ennui can seem to pulse or flow from one body to another, independant it seems, of our other senses. The true magic of viewing a movie is that should a film engulf the viewer completely into the lives and minds of the characters and the situations at hand, the viewer can truly feel as though they were experiencing firsthand the chemistry or emotions between the characters.
In a scene mid-way through HEAVY, Victor (Pruitt Taylor Vince) approaches his co-worker Callie (Liv Tyler) who is buckled over in sadness from a comment made by another co-worker, Delores (Debbie Harry). Victor moves to Callie slowly and cautiously, and then holds his hand to the side of her forehead. Callie reaches up to hold his hand. Soon after, as Victor leaves the room, he is grabbed by Delores who reaches out and holds him in a very similar way. The difference is, we can _feel_ the longing and sadness of Victor and Callie pulse through the brief moment of contact that they make: but when Dolores reaches out to Victor, we feel nothing but the cold contact of flesh on flesh. This is due to the fine direction and acting at the heart of HEAVY.
Victor is a "mama's boy" who works as a chef in the restaurant owned by his mother Dollie (Shelley Winters). Callie has been recently hired as a waitress, something that makes Dolores, the restaurant's other waitress, extremely upset -- Dolores believes Callie's hiring is intended as punishment for sleeping with Dollie's husband years ago. The tensions between Dollie, Dolores and Callie escalate as Victor is caught inbetween the three women: devoted to his mother, yet silently desiring Callie, and actively rejecting the advances of the flirtatious and slutty Dolores. When Victor's mother dies, Victor can't bear to make the changes necessary to continue his life, flirting with his many options and rarely choosing to do anything.
While HEAVY is a film short on dialogue and plot it is unspeakably rich in the development and portrayal of the characters within it. James Mangold infuses HEAVY with subtle visual cues to express the characters' emotions, and paces the film deliberately lugubriously. Taylor Vince gives his character a wonderful, bittersweet air of repression, love and uncertainty -- nearly always having a facial expression that seems to not know whether it is a smile or a frown, and eyes that dart back and forth indicating uncomfort. Liv Tyler and Shelley Winters both give authentic performances, and Debbie Harry does a spectacular job in a film much more demanding than the kind of drek she's typically present in.
HEAVY often feels so doused in emotional anguish that it feels like a fever dream, the kind that can awaken you in a cold sweat and a panic. Victor, when at the hospital visiting his mother, goes down to the lunchroom and tries to get a hot dog. He is ignored by an apathetic server and goaded by a patient at the hospital who alternately seems crazy and the only one who can truly understand Victor -- it plays like a scene out of ERASERHEAD. When the nightmarish aspects break, the viewer is left with emotionally agonizing scenes such as one where Callie appears at Victor's house unexpectedly and notices a picture of her face that Victor had stolen hanging on his refrigerator. Nothing captures the feel of HEAVY better than when the viewer watches Callie scan the kitchen with her eyes, not knowing the picture is there, and anticipating how she'll negatively react when she finally sees her picture hanging on the refrigerator, and what the impact of her seeing the picture (and the realization of Victor's longings) will be on Victor. Victor's repression is expressed brilliantly in one of the final scenes where he finally reveals the anger that has welled up in him throughout the movie -- only after an extremely long shot of him looking bewildered, as if he had suddenly come to the realization that he is allowed to express his anger and not hide it in his wince of a grin.
Certainly, HEAVY isn't a film for everybody -- understandably, not everbody enjoys going to a theater to see a film which portrays the sadness and longing of its characters and how they react to tragedies in life both big and small. In a movie season of detached and dull films, however, the way that first-time director James Mangold sends these character's emotions beyond the screen and into the audience is nothing short of magic -- a magic unmatched by any other film I've seen this year.
-- signed: ESCHATFISCHE, david h t t p : / /w w w . f i s c h e . c o m (esch@fische.com) ------------------------------------------------------
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